The Evelyn Blake Diaries
by Evelyn Blake
Summary: Being the intimate diary of Emily's hated high school rival, Evelyn Blake, who may have been seriously misunderstood- or not.
1. September 1, 1902: A New Diary

**Monday, September 1, 1902**

Today I woke from a dreadful nightmare that it was the first day of school, only to discover that it _was_ the first day of school. Sordid coincidence!

Since the wretched Mrs. Halloran filthied the old diary with her slimy sheep's gaze, leaving me no choice but to consign it to the flames, I have resolved to keep _this_ one safely under lock and key. When Father gave me money for a new hat, I simply bought this hideous deposit-box instead, and he can writhe in inchoate confusion all he likes when I meet him next weekend in last year's. I am quite pleased with the box. It's roomy enough to keep all my writings in together, and with such a grim banker's exterior not even such a grim banker as old Halloran would suspect it chock-full of that dimly repulsive wonder, The Soul of a Young Girl. Of course someone _may_ try to snatch it expecting jewels and stock-options, but they shall just have to live with disappointment, as I with the risk of burglary. The risk of Hallorantamination is _far_ more fearsome, don't you think?

Must breakfast and dash to school. Tom hasn't said word one to me since he got back from Paris. Aunt Dan claims fatigue, but I suspect he's holed up in his room with the blinds shut in a desperate bid to pretend he's not back in Canada. That's what _I_ should be doing in his place, anyway-- that is, if I didn't have the good sense to _stay_ abroad, Shrewsbury High School be damned.


	2. September 5, 1902: Utterly as Expected

**Friday, September 5, 1902**

Dearest Diary,

First week of school utterly as expected. Dreadful tittering girls and pompous whey-faced boys with smug expressions. I felt my heart sink fair to the ground just getting _near _the din. At least Tom is back and the same as ever, only infinitely more insufferable and hence, more Tom-like. Dear Tom! He taunted me saying he had the new Gide, and that he _wouldn't_ let me read it even if my French improved, as it would turn my maiden eyes to ash and my heart to whoredom.

"How dreadful," I said _quite sarcastically_, and he tsk-tsked at me as if he were his own mother. The resemblance to Aunt Dan about the eyes and mouth was uncanny. I half expected him to sprout another chin just so it could tremble in matronly disapproval. Heredity is a monstrous thing, Diary. I can feel my forehead pinching Father-like as I write these _very words_.

Tom and I had quite a laugh over his French novels, which he has wrapped up in scraps at the bottom of his trunk "to keep from contaminating Shrewsbury morals." But then he turns around and says he won't be responsible for me reading it and being spoiled. And that is only _half_ a joke, I'm afraid. Apparently even a summer in Paris isn't sufficient to cure Tom of _all_ the Blake virtues.

But all that's to be borne. He's editor of the _Quill_ this year and a lock for class president, so we shall have a splendid time of it. The last two editors were dreadful _illiterate_ bores. We joked about hanging a banner outside the door: _The Quill Welcomes the Twentieth Century—Better Late Than Never!_ But it didn't come off. Tom was stuck on the notion that it would be funnier to welcome the _nineteenth_ century, but of course the previous editors were nothing if not devoted followers of Mrs. Hemans and Alfred Lord T., and Irene Winthrop said it would be in poor form anyway. Irene is a Senior and a good sort—one of those splendid girls who achieve old-maidhood by thirteen or so, pince-nez and all. She ought to be editor this year, but Mr. Scoville won't have _The Quill_ "devolve into a literary sewing bee"—the inevitable result of too many girl names on the masthead. So Irene is "Treasurer" for the second year in a row and does the work of both positions, and _tolerates_ Tom and me and pompous Mr. Scoville with a dry efficiency.

Late Monday May and Kate Errol and I helped Mary move house. You don't know Mary Carswell, Diary, because I burned all the pages with her in them, curse Mrs. Halloran's black heart- but sure an' she's a rare and parfect darling, she is. Her new roommate is a scream—a big blowsy country blonde who fancies Shrewsbury Montreal and herself a whole Special Fall Edition of fashion plates. She fairly whirlwinded the air out of Mary's room, tiered and pinched and frilled to within an inch of her life. I can't say I'd _touch_ those dreadful pigeon-breast silhouettes with a pole if I had such a bosom—it's a wonder she doesn't fall flat on her face. Naturally the boys hang around her like cats at the fishmonger's. And the poor thing is _barely_ fifteen! Her father is one of those ghastly incompetent widowers, so I hear, who lose the ability to talk to their daughters the instant they start to grow up in the slightest. Then they shove them off on some half-moron housekeeper with warts on her knuckles and spend the next decade alternating between bellowing at them about propriety and pushing expensive clothes on them as on a pudding-headed Yankee mistress.

_Not_ that I speak from experience, Diary dear.

The poor girl's name is Elsie Something and her personality is such that she absolutely _tramples_ dear Mary, who is nothing if not excruciatingly polite. Mary and May and I have named her the Scarlet Harlot, or the S.H. for short, so that we can chat about her happily while she is flinging things about the room. The S.H. fancies herself a great thespian in the making, so it stands to reason she can't so much as unpack her trunk without _throwing_ something. I feel sure we shall be either great friends or bitter enemies. It would make _sense_ for us to be friends, of course, and no doubt we should have splendid adventures together should the Fates intend, but you can't at all rely on people of that type to be _sensible_ about anything.

I will say this much for the S.H.: She makes an impression, which is more than you can say for the other twenty-odd girls in the Prep class. Why are we all such dreadful bores, I wonder—and _smug_ about it to boot? Is it because we've had it hammered into our pretty heads that "the happiest women have no history"?


	3. September 6, 1902: Mrs Henry Blake, etc

**Saturday night, September 6, 1902**

At the meal we sit together;

_Salve tibi!_ I must hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather,

Sort of season, time of year:

_Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely_

_Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;_

_What's the Latin name for "parsley"?_

What's the Greek name for "swine's snout"?

Father in town. _Intolerable_ family dinner at Uncle Henry's, with more than the usual ration of stale jokes to season the same four allegedly comic incidents as have been dutifully recited since they occurred twenty-some years ago. Tom was out at the Sitwell's dinner dance, but Lila was there. Livia is off at Queen's, which Aunt Henry took as an invitation to tell her own "comical" stories of teaching in Blair Water. Aunt Henry- I can't say I bothered to commit her first name to memory- is Uncle Henry's third wife and so dreadfully uninteresting it almost comes back around to being utterly fascinating. She was a teacher, but (it soon becomes clear) a pretty poor one, with no sense of proportion or personality—a formerly frustrated old maid like to be an even more frustrated wife and stepmother (Lila for her part _hates_ her with a most unseemly passion, which she lost no opportunity sharing with me; Livia's lack of interest in weekend visits may or may not speak for itself).

Dear Aunt Mrs. H.B. genuinely believes that everything her students did that annoyed her was done _purposefully_ to annoy her and is impervious to argument on this point. I confess I egged her on a little, much to Lila's dismay. For all her bluster and pettiness, she was quite funny and engaging, as petty people so often are- so much more so, I think, than those blessed bewildering souls who never carry grudges. Lila herself is a brilliant example of this principle in action- I _still_ laugh over some of the things she said about Everett Sitwell after he bruised her heart when she was a Prep. In perfect honesty, Diary, these grudges can buoy our hearts as often as they weigh them down.

I _think_ a few of Aunt H.B.'s former adversaries might have found their way into the Prep class. I shall have to investigate. Knowing Aunt Henry, they are probably splendid people eager to have a good laugh of their own over the Wrath of Mrs. Henry B..

Of course Father _did_ notice something amiss with my hat, and of course he _couldn't_ say a word for fear he would get it all wrong and reveal how little attention he had paid all spring. I could barely keep a straight face. At last he said, "Well, maybe _one more hat_ for the fall season will do the trick, do you think Evie?" and I _burst out laughing_. I am to skip English and Algebra to go to Jones and Mac with him Monday, and if I can't whip up enough paternal guilt to make that _three_ more hats, my name isn't Evelyn Blake.

And of course Father will insist on taking me to church on Sunday. If he believed a word of it himself, I would go gladly, but he _doesn't_- he only thinks it's good for _me_. I _loathe_ hypocrisy. Would condemn him roundly for it in sight of God and Rev. Scobie tomorrow, but must hold my tongue until hats are in hand. I shouldn't have to choose between moral cowardice and looking shabby, but there's our fallen nature in a nutshell. _Salve tibi!_ I should be a preacher.


	4. September 8, 1902: Wingless

**Monday, September 8, 1902**

Diary, my love—

Saw Marsh Orde at church Sunday, but couldn't so much as move my mouth at him as Father was watching me like the proverbial hawk. His apprenticeship must have started, or close enough. He's to work at the livery with his brother—who really is as dreadful as Marsh is reputed to be. Marsh himself is nothing so dreadful. I had to tutor him in English last term and he's a lamb, really. I don't believe a word of that story of the girl in Derry Pond—unless it was that made him so shy and squeamish. Well, if he's in town I'll see him often enough around—no doubt oftener than would be strictly pleasant, though Marsh _is_ a dear. He cow-eyed me all through the exit hymn- poor clumsy pet.

Sermon indescribably dull as expected. Audible snoring among the venerable of Shrewsbury. Must knock out the rest of this algebra before bed or I will be sniped at by hook-nosed bluestockings all day—which is to say, even _more_ so than usual. Entire weekend an absolute waste of breath.

Shopping with Father was a demi-success at least. We scraped Jones and Mac clean of all that was good—some splendid stockings (ribbed cashmere and silk both) a trim pair of ivory-colored shoes with the most darling little Puritan buckles (for Father's little Puritan), two blouses and a really splendid fitted jacket with high sleeves. And hats, of course. We had lunch at the Parnassus Café on Prince and he sprinkled dull good advice over his coffee—no doubt imperfectly copied from a women's magazine somewhere. I said I wanted to stop by the bookstore for a present for Tom. He's mad for Henry James this year, but of course the intolerable "Booke" [sic] "Shoppe" [sic] won't have _The Wings of the Dove_ till _January_ at the earliest. But they most _certainly_ carry the complete Martha Finley and a _lovely_ selection of embossed color covers on the "tasteful and uplifting" _Heroines of Canadian History_ series—said heroines being primarily fictional and their heroics exclusively swoon-centered, "Evelyn, Girl of the North Country" being an _especial favorite_.

Maybe I'll get _that_ for Tom's birthday instead. Only I got him a joke gift last year, and it's such bad form to give a joke gift and not follow it with a real one. _Damn_ Shrewsbury.

I wonder if Charlottetown would have it—or _anything_ new or worthwhile. Then again, if I'm to go out of my way, it might as well be to the mainland. I wonder how suspicious Father would be of my motives if I suggested a visit to Montreal.

Dear Lord, how I loathe this _entire_ hairy sprawling oaf of a country! Skip the James—send me the wings!


	5. September 12, 1902: A New Acquaintance

**Friday, September 12, 1902**

Met the S.H.'s friend today- a Miss Emily Byrd Starr—during a failed attempt at a study session with Mary. It was a perfect orgy of small-town sub-coincidence of the kind schoolgirls- your Evie most respectfully excluded- love to imagine is fraught with dramatic significance. Not only was _Emily_ the very same student Aunt Henry could not stop loathing, but her friend the Scarlet Harlot is none other than Ilse - not Elsie- Burnley, the ragamuffin daughter of that allegedly handsome Blair Water doctor who set Aunt Henry's musty maiden heart so repulsively aflutter when she was Miss Isabelle Brownell the country schoolmarm. The muddy fields of PEI have emptied their darling dregs upon us, it seems. Small world, etc. ad nauseum.

Well, you know I wouldn't miss an opportunity to rake some dirt on Aunt H.B. if I could. I thought it would be a good "in" to mention the coincidence—_no one_ can have a wholly good experience of Mrs. Henry B., clever as she is in her more lucid moments, and I was certain the girls would leap at the opportunity to rake her over the coals a bit. But Emily B. S.- a pasty, rangy thing with eyes like great ugly bruises- froze me out the minute I mentioned Aunt Henry's name. I tried to draw her into conversation, but she only stiffened the more, as if I had outraged her delicate soul by so much as mentioning the absurd Mrs. Henry.

So I froze her right back. Oh, it wasn't the _mature_ or even the _pragmatic_ thing to do, Diary- I know! But there wasn't any way around it. I _couldn't_ pursue a normal conversation on those terms. When people snub me outright like that I _have_ to shut down—I simply haven't the mechanism to do otherwise.

I needn't have put myself out in any case. Miss B.S., heaven save her pore wee soul, _really is_ everything Aunt Henry promised she would be- a haughty, brittle, hopelessly naive daughter of one of those dreadful local royalties— convict-spawned in some bleary Highland mist, no doubt, before being washed lamby-white by senescence and the briny Atlantic. She has _literary ambitions_, the poor dear, and dresses as badly as the S.H., only in the opposite direction- like a maiden aunt of the last century rather than a gaudy kept shopgirl of this one. She is obviously desperate for a guiding hand, and the S.H. is hardly one to lend it. I wanted to hook her arm in mine and march her down to Jones and Mac for a wardrobe overhaul- or barring that, slap some humility into her Wheeler Wilcox-curdled brain before she made enough of an ass of herself to leave hoofprints all over Mrs. Adamson's parlor.

Well, I won't dwell on it. But it is a pity—if only because her initials are so _nearly_ my own. I _already_ dread the inevitability of the Yearbook Society garbling our captions and attributing to me some inane poeticism of Miss E. B. S., Prep.

Incidentally, Diary, I _hate_ when people say "It's a small world" in earnest. It _isn't_ small. One shouldn't be so mean as to impute smallness to the world simply because one happens to live in a particularly small and stifling corner of it. The world is enormous—it's the _Island_ that's small. I want to scream that at people who have (for example) the mathematical ineptitude to be _astonished_ that their old schoolteacher might have married one of the imbecile scions of a slightly larger town a few miles down the road. But I'm afraid I seldom say anything clever in real life. I just glare and roll my eyes and think black clouds. _You_ get the best of me, Diary-my-love— and, it goes without saying, the worst.


	6. September 15, 1902: Tom's Birthday

**September 15, 1902**

2 AM or so - dead quiet.

Even the yowling cats have gone to bed, but I am wide awake. Tom's birthday was splendid. No, I didn't just get home- on a school night? Would Mrs. Dan Blake allow such frivolity? No, it wrapped up decently at ten PM and the lot of us swept out into the autumn air like unruly leaves. _I_ have been up since, not writing or reading or thinking or geometring - only whirring like a spool-mill with half-formed thoughts. Honestly, Di, I have so many nights like this it's a wonder I get anything done at all.

I couldn't bear to disappoint Tom on his seventeenth and I _won't_ deal through the Booke Shoppe (sic!) if they insist on being meddlesome and prudish, so I ordered _Wings of the Dove_ through a New York bookseller. It's gotten to the point where I almost refuse to buy anything from the Shoppe—or would if Shrews. H.S. didn't have all its textbooks there. There's always such a gaggle of biddies flocking around. Miss Price and Miss Taylor were eyeing me the whole time they were in, the one whispering to the other and casting meaningful glances in my direction. If there's anything I can't stand, it's a _stupid_ old maid. They were twitting over me reading a George Moore novel. But I know for a fact they both have crayons of Byron in their parlor. Shocking! It makes me wonder what Satanic genius of our age will be cuddled to the sunken bosoms of the respectable middle-aged dumplings of seventy years hence. Mrs. Forester leaned over my shoulder last I was in there to check that the story I was reading in the new _Madison's_ wasn't damaging my morals. I wanted her to ask outright, so that I could answer that it might, if only it were better written. But no one obliges me by setting up to be bested.

Honestly, they publish some of the stupidest things even in quite reputable magazines. I can't see that my own "nonsense" is any worse, and that generally has a sense of humor that isn't also cloying. I know my good qualities as well as my bad. I can turn a phrase without breaking it in two and I don't have the bad taste to name a character "Abigail Worth" when the moral is that she hasn't any. The stuff in Madison's is stupid beyond words, all sickly, bright-colored misunderstandings resolved and unresolved, laced with dull description and worse dialogue. Every other month they throw in a dialect story for good measure, wherein an Irishman or a Negro does something banal and the joke is that they do it speaking like an Irishman or Negro, and at least once per issue there is a preternaturally big-eyed and spunky damsel who has to choose between the rich boy and the poor one, or marriage and a trip to Europe, or between buying a dress to go to the dance and helping an orphan child escape starvation. The decision is inevitably wrapped up with an exclamatory statement, and I don't think I've read a single story in this genre where I didn't think the heroine had made exactly the wrong choice.

And don't get me started on the poetry, Diary! Words cannot _describe_. I think a good half of what we print in the _Quill_ is better, and that is ninety percent pure swill to begin with.

Anyway, once I had placed the order, I marched straight to the Shoppe and bought _Evelyn, Girl of the North Country_—tacky two-color gold-embossed cover, tinted frontispiece, two-inch margins and all. I inscribed it lavishly and enclosed a little green card explaining that his real present was on the way, wrapped it in pink paper and lace, and had a good laugh at his face when he beheld the pouting, lantern-jawed Evelyn, crushed red rose to rose-red lips, eyes rolled high to heaven. Of course he saw the joke immediately. Then the boys all twitted him about being an old man and Lila and Livia played a duet on the piano that soon turned into a rowdy free-for-all, with everyone improvising verses about Tom. Mine was the best, I think.

Livia was eager to talk to me. She grows duller every year, but it isn't her fault. Girlhood is like a girdle that shapes us all the same. Boys after her, boys ignoring her, the unbelievable idiocy of day-to-day gossip, her stupid and jaded teachers all gnaw and sap her like mosquitoes, drop by drop. She does chores for her board and it's exhausting. "I feel like I'm an old married woman without ever having the chance to be a bride," she said. If the aunts and uncles had overheard, there would have followed a round of derisive snorting—for _what_, indeed, could a _sixteen-year-old girl_ know about such matters? And _what_ could possess her to _speculate_ on them? But I knew how she felt, though I don't work for my board. The ribs, the lungs, the flesh is our own, but the silhouette of the season is the same for all of us, and nothing like any of us. So we lace up and learn to get used to it, and forget what it was like to breathe deep.

(What _can_ they talking about so long? whispered Aunt Dan. The latest fashions, I expect, said Uncle Henry. Perceptive darlings!)

So I try to forgive Livia her dullness as I hope she will forgive mine, and resolve to write her more often, and hope that she will write to me. So slips my little life away. And not all the snickering aunts and hovering guardians in Shrewsbury will suffice tonight to make me feel anything less than old.


	7. September 15, 1902: Opportunities Abound

**Monday evening, September 15, 1902**

Diary dear,

Absolutely exhausted—but you knew that, didn't you? Fell asleep on the cusp of daylight and on waking to a choice of breakfast or getting to Geometry on time, chose neither. Miss Aylmer _quite_ prim on my eventual arrival, but nary a word was spoken. Assembly at noon; took the opportunity for a nap on May Hilson's obliging shoulder—poor Mary being entirely too scrawny to sleep on comfortably.

Unfortunately, one of those ineradicable Mackenzies Shrewsbury is rife with—Greg or Doug or Lung or Lurch – started whispering with May about me and finally trying to wake me and ask to accompany me to various non-events. It was all dreadfully boring and served to make me even sleepier than before. First I successfully evaded a Mackenzian escort home by saying I was needed in the _Quill_ "offices"—as indeed I had promised Tom I would read submissions for him, though it took the threat of romance a la Mackenzie to remind me of it. Then he asked if I was free on the week-ends. I told him I had family obligations. _Then_ he asked after next week-end and May said, "She hasn't any plans, _yet_," and squeezed my arm as if she was doing me a favor. Diary, I nearly kicked her in the ankles. "Would you go to the Harvest Dance with me next Friday?" he said.

And before I could say a word, May said, "She'd love to." That woke me up! Diary, I was so furious I could barely speak.

"_Will_ you?" he said, turning his great ham-face from side to side. "That's great. I'll—should I pick you up?"

"I didn't say yes," I said finally. "I said I'll think about it." Though of course I had said nothing of the kind.

"Oh, that's fine," said Mackenzie. "That's splendid. I'll see you in History. Are you sure you won't want a walk home?"

I was sure.

"Don't be such a snob, Evelyn," May said (when he was gone, of course). "You put on airs around all the boys and it's a bad idea. You're nice-looking, but you're not nearly pretty enough to be that imperious."

Truer words! Yet not wholly to the point. I'm certainly not pretty enough for my imperiousness to drive whey-faced high-school boys to suicide and poetry. But the idea that one might simply act toward people whom one dislikes in a manner befitting said dislike—_that_ is far too straightforward to have occurred to May Hilson. I'm afraid I froze her out rather badly for the rest of the day, though now that I'm home I feel as if I might as well go to the dance with Lurch. No doubt it'll be a refreshing change from the usual weekend round of compositions and Mrs. Halloran's Mission Aid dinners, and Father will be pleased to hear that I haven't yet wholly thrown in my lot with the life of the mind, thereby wasting all the money he spends on shapely underthings. "If you aren't going to go out and meet people," he said to me once, "then what was the point of sending you to high school in the first place?"

_Dear_ Father.

In truth, the "family obligations" aforementioned amount to a single tea at Aunt Amelia's, but it seems I _also_ have a tryst to keep with Marsh O.. Oh, it's not as romantic as all that, Diary. Poor Marsh just wants me to tutor him in English so he can sit his entrance exam again in the winter. Now that his brother Reid is getting so much praise for "moving up in the world" (via the golden ladder of Shrewsbury H.S.), Marsh wants to give moving up another shot. When I told him we might meet this weekend he lit up like a whole street's worth of streetlamps. Poor Marsh! Well, we shall see.

Now for the real news!

The _Quill_ contributor's pile is a perfect rat's feast of rubbish. Well, you knew that too, of course, but it's hard to know without experiencing it the teeth-grinding _stupidity_ of reading such a mass of nothing, all at once. This afternoon there was much half-joking about the three of us writing the whole thing ourselves Mr. Scofield is in a permanent state of apoplexy over the number of submissions dealing with A Girl's First Love; Irene and I can hardly find it in our hearts to blame him. At least the boys can be counted on to butcher a comic subject or a philosophical conundrum now and then for variety. Submissions are supposed to be judged anonymously, but I can recognize half the hands in school by now, and Irene all, and one tends to peek in any case. The ingenious Emily B.S. has sent us a clever little pyramid of seven-dollar words, individually gift-wrapped in gilt paper. _Dear_ Emily. But it isn't a _poem_ in the least.

After a few especially poignant howlers, Tom said, Ev, why don't you write us a poem. I hemmed and hawed but was happy enough to let myself be heckled into it. So I'm to be a _Quill_ contributor at last! I think I have the stomach for it now. Last year, thinking I was terribly clever, I sent four poems to the Quill, realized they were trash a week later and ran in to beg Irene to remove them from consideration.

At first she pretended she didn't know what I was talking about. She said,

"Evelyn, all submissions are read blind."

"Yes," I said, "but if you find out something is mine, please don't print it."

And she agreed solemnly that she would not. I thanked her profusely and asked that they please be burned. What an impossible little chit I was! It's astonishing to think that was only a year ago. She was really quite kind about the whole thing, and looking back on those poems, I strongly suspect that she had already thrown them out without a second thought. But she refrained from bringing it up when Tom suggested I write something, and as far as I know she hasn't told anyone. I can't say I would have had as much self-control in her place.

Now, though, I feel I can face the prospect of publication head-on. Does that sound overly dramatic? I know, tsk-tsk, only the _Quill_—but it _is_ significant _now_ even if it won't look it in ten years. Why must everything be judged by what one will think of it in ten years? If nothing that happens _now_ is going to be of any worth, why not skip straight to being grown up?

I fiddled around with some false starts after dinner, but nothing stuck—or what did was dull and musty. Not bone-jarringly _stupid_ like the other poems—I have enough discrimination to see _that_—but not good enough for me to show to someone and say, "This is something you should see." _You_ may be a raw muddle, Diary, and I may love you for your patience, but I like to think I have _some_ standards for what I show the rest of the world.


	8. September 23, 1902: Autumn Leaves

**Tuesday, September 23, 1902**

I am fiddling with rhyme-schemes and slant rhymes to-day. Look, look at the little thing I made!

Autumn Leaves

When you let go, leaves, and grant your beam

Of apple-brightness to the graying earth,

Look up: the life you knew

Ascends beyond you, limitless and green

Though roots have nursed your veins from birth

Though you have loved the branch, let go, let go

And love in dying what you could not know

Was not forever you.

Love it at the last, the dream

Of flight, the night embracing fast

As unexpected joy the bright

Dissolving green, the dying tender light.

Yes, I _am_ a wee bit pleased with myself! This one is quite satisfying, like a little dance. Abca bddc and then a pretty tangle of internal rhyme like a pirouette. Mr. Scofeld _loathes _internal rhyme, but I think it _sings_. Quoth Tom, "Isn't the rhythm a bit off too, Ev?" _Dear _Tom. Luckily _Irene _saw that it was deliberate, and I know for certain she's read far less modern poetry than Tom has. Of course no course of reading could cure Tom of impeccable taste in things forty years out of date; his essential Blakeness is, as previously noted, unassailable. He has been a bit grudging with this one, wanting to line edit it into some shambling horror, but he shan't touch it. Irene will make certain.

I cannot tolerate a _modern _poem-- or a dance partner-- that ticks along like a metronome, so I have given it its own peculiar gait. No doubt I shall think differently in six months, but for now I feel I can safely hand it in without dashing back in to retrieve it. Quoth Tom, "Do you want to work on the meter a little?

Of course there is much I don't like about it. But perhaps if I don't _tell _you what it is, you won't notice (and you'll never laugh at me _anyway, _will you, Diary? Not even if I crust myself with the barnacle-gems of a billion glittering clichés!)


	9. September 24, 1902: Passions

**Wednesday, September 24, 1902**

Irene lent me the little book of poetry she was reading last week. It's pure slush in itself: a welter of sentiment and sweat over very little- birds, sometimes, or a curled strand of hair. But in that very _excess __of __passion _there is something fascinating. Your Ev never suffered such paroxysms— not over birds, nor bright-faced boys, nor pies perfectly baked. I clearly remember _wishing _to feel something of the kind—not _only_ when I read ten pages of _Song __of __Myself _at fourteen or so and ran out the kitchen door with my arms open, making an honest effort to call the world into my body, as in school that very day I had made an equally honest—and fruitless— attempt to recite the major events of the Norman Conquest— but in a thousand smaller ways before and since.

Mary, whose poor meek little body encloses a spirit of flame like the burning heart of the earth, is my opposite in this respect. Mary is at present hopelessly in love with _three _people simultaneously: the Scarlet Harlot, for whom she has recently said she would gladly die, the chronically contemptuous but admittedly well-dressed Mr. Scoville, and one of my idiotic third cousins on the John side, Ray Sitwell. The first two are at least understandable by schoolgirl-logic; the S.H. is flashy and chummy and answers everything with a joke—Mary's opposite and therefore her ideal; Mr. S. is just aloof enough to _seem _unusually intelligent and takes too long grooming not to _intend _for his female pupils to swoon over him. But Raymond Sitwell? I say nothing of his appearance or personality, for there is nothing worth saying. He runs in the track and field team, though not particularly well or badly, and when he graduates he will go into "business" like his father and marry – oh, I hope to heaven _not _Mary Carswell! —and beget a brood of tow-headed indistinguishable children who grow up to squabble about their inheritance. I have yet to hear him say a single thing worth remembering a minute later. Dear little Mary _can't _have such poor taste—yet to hear her talk about Ray, you'd think he were a young god descended from Olympus. And all this while they are barely friendly! I shudder to think what might happen if he were to walk her home from school. Or – heavens forefend—kiss her in a shadowy corner. I feel as if all I do nowadays is berate her.

"_Don't _stare at Ray in the classroom," I said yesterday. "People _notice_. And don't always be tagging along after Ilse (for Mary _won't _let me call her idol the Scarlet Harlot in her presence!)— you'll end up a joke in the light-verse section of the yearbook. Really, Mary, you mustn't make a fool of yourself."

"Oh, I won't, I won't," she whispers (for Mary _must _whisper when she becomes excited, else she might shout). "I _couldn't. _But oh, Evie, I _want _to _so __much_."

At times I begin to wonder whether my concern for Mary isn't something else at bottom, a kind of perverse envy of her susceptibility to _feeling_. For I _don't _love like that—I know I don't. I'm fond of my cousins, especially Lila and Tom, and Livia sometimes; I've stayed up long nights with Mary and May and Kate and even Ilse and Irene. I've recklessly revealed my share of foolish secrets. I've admired some boys and danced with others, and struck up splendid shallow flirtations with others still. But have I _loved_?

My mother is a shadow—I _must_ have loved her, but whatever traces it has left on me are undetectable. I suppose I love Father and admire him in his way, but where his life and mine converge is no more than a sliver of affections and misunderstandings.

Have I an abiding passion?

Yes.

But for the _words __themselves_, not for the worlds they contain. I am too in love with little tricks, with internal rhyme and eccentric rhyme-schemes. I fear I would rather say something clever than something true. And now I am annoyed again with "Autumn Leaves" and want to rescue it from Irene's typesetting. I want to set it alight and imagine that _soon _I will do something worthwhile instead.

But I won't!

I won't let Tom and Irene down—or _myself! _It's _my _poem, shallow or otherwise, and it will stay in the _Quill._

_But __I __want __to _want _to __say __something __true._


	10. September 29,1902: A High North Wind

**Monday, September 29, 1902**

_Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme,_

_And wanton, wishing I were born a bird._

I don't know _why _I'm so peevish, Diary. Nothing is wrong in the least-- I've perfected the trick of looking utterly enraptured in church while thinking _exclusively _of secular matters, and have been such an Angel of the Home that even the dread Mrs. Halloran hasn't been able to snipe me for anything of late. And I danced by the light o' the moon with poor Lurch Mackenzie (who _has _a Christian name and a mother who loves him, but I won't pretend I care to _you,_ darling)-- and even let him knead my lily-white knuckles in the most aggravating manner as I thought out a resolution to my poem. Declined in my best Presbyterian manner his offer of a kiss and a turn about the orchard.

As for Marshall Orde, future Hardscrabble Road Boy Makes Good (or perhaps not so very _much _good; his enthusiasm outweighs his ability at the moment)-- Lor' bless him, but the poor lad's smitten. Heaven knows it's not my witty conversation, for _that _I fear goes right over his head like a flock of geese on the crest of an autumn breeze. Therefore, I can only conclude that I am _not _as hideous as all that. A lump like Lurch might take into account such intangibles as "virtue" and "demeanour," but trust Hardscrabble Road for the visceral reaction. And what did he say to me? "You're the prettiest girl on the Island, Ev-- and the smartest, of course."

Oh, I know perfectly well neither is true-- but it's good to hear anyway. I didn't _swoon_, Diary-- I promise! Still, a sweet word from Marsh is better than all the pasteboard poesy of all the Mackenzies on PEI. Long story short, there's to be more tutoring for plucky Marsh Orde-- of only the most respectable kind, of course! Don't get yourself into a lather imagining it's anything _else_, Mrs. Halloran. How on earth did you trick some poor brute into marrying you, anyway?

The air is nervous-- the wind howling round the side of the house, howling in the trees. The wind is a meteorological phenomenon, wholly incidental to human emotion-- and the wind howls just as loudly tonight for stupid May, and snoring Father, and you, Mrs. Halloran, if you were in bed where you belonged. It howls for babies in their cradles who don't yet know what they are or what they've been born to, and it howls for dying people, old and young. At this moment, no doubt, Emily B.S. is lying awake in that dreadful boiled-cabbage house in the Firs, congratulating herself that the wind is singing to her alone. Ugh! I don't know why I thought of her.

Have been cursing myself all day for using "bright" twice in a twelve-line poem. But _that _isn't it. It's everything. It's the scraps of songs the wind carries around and the way every fat old bird on High Street chirps at me to love my youth, as if they hadn't already forgotten and re-arranged their own to suit them, and the grey blank wall I see when I try to think about the future. Evie, Evie, you should be grateful! You're neither a dowd nor a monster nor cripplingly stupid, and for all you rant against Blake prosperity and Blake propriety, you've never had to muddle through without a family behind you. All that is something. The wind is nothing. The wind is one pocket of air falling on another, just as tomorrow's composition is one line of ink after another-- or will be, sometime close to morning. Time to leave off being childish and finish it.


	11. October 1 and 13, 1902: A School Concert

**Wednesday, October 1, 1902**

Dear Diary,

What a torrent of rubbish I've poured on your poor head. You'll forgive me, though, won't you? _You_ know I mean well.

Miss Ayers has prevailed on me to recite at the concert. I shall do it, but for two reasons only, which I list in order of their importance:

1. It will give me an excuse to wear my new sage evening dress and high shoes, and-

2._ No one_ else in school has any subtlety and _someone _has to stand up for Not Shouting Everything.

That last is really a freak of nature— we Blakes have the rare ability to carry the room without _seeming _to raise our voices. At least I have and Father and Lila to a lesser extent. I believe my grandfather could do it very well, though my memory on this point may be skewed. Tom simply hasn't the kink. His voice comes to him direct from the MacLester side, all bagpipe and rainfall. The point is that I shall be able to do a splendid Last Duchess in a low, sly, conspiratorial voice—exactly the voice of the poem. For I haven't any patience with the fashion for arm-waving and pulled-taffy vowels and other schoolgirl histrionics that _certain people _are so fond of. Ayers was a bit sceptical of my choice- because the voice of the poem is male, and my day-to-day voice is as shrill as any lady shrew's- but I soon won her over. I think it'll go over marvellously—low, diabolical, conspiratorial—that is, if I don't choke! But I won't! I've two weeks to practice and I know the thing nearly by heart anyway.

Alas, the wrong books are calling me- the ones with _algebra _in them. I can't even call on Tom this week as he's off in Montreal with Aunt Amelia for some poor-excuse MacLester function, the funeral of a fourth cousin or some such. And Mary is so swamped herself she won't have me over. May of course is no Earthly use in any endeavour. She wouldn't be in high school at all if it weren't expected of her. Tell me again why I didn't go to Queens!

Oh, yes. "Kenneth Blake's daughter is not under the necessity of working for a living." Is she under the necessity of being _bored to death?_

**Oct 13, 1902**

Concert over, thank Heaven! I don't think the Mackenzies of the audience quite followed my Browning, but it was well enough they didn't, or tongues might wag. I was pleased (I may say this in private!) how well I looked: the sage drew out the dark of my eyes and gave my hair a gloss and tint it never has around other colours. And the shoes! I suppose some shameless Yankee courtesan gave Father the idea to send them- certainly it was no Shrewsbury matron- and a more sophisticated eye might even call them whorish. But _I _was prim, Di, and laced and buttoned, and any disapproval the matrons and the matrons-to-be might have indulged in was too enmeshed in envy to satisfy them, I have no doubt.

I must confess here that to _feel _the envy of the other girls was satisfying. Oh, I could give you a sad story to justify it, and turn self-righteous about how wretched and snubbed and poked-at I was in grammar school (as if to be wretched in grammar school were a sign of unimpeachable virtue), but I won't, and it wouldn't matter, anyway- I would have been just as thrilled to watch all those dowds and peacocks salivate if I had been popular all my life. Now that I put it down plain, it sounds awful, doesn't it? But it's _true._

The concert was even a bit better than usual. Irene did a wobbly but passionate poem about a shipwreck- chilling and ludicrous, and neither any less so because of the other! I was so pleased with her I threw my arms right over her last season's sleeves. May did less well, but I didn't mind and _she _laughed it off, and we went down to Cavanaugh's together for tea by gaslight. Irene really is a splendid chum, albeit guarded in her affections—as I am. _May _of course has no boundaries whatsoever; she is everyone's friend and everyone's enemy equally, and will unburden herself to anyone and betray anyone without a thought. It's a strange way of living, but it's not hard to see the merits of it- for_ she_ doesn't live in fear of anything breaking in on her secret self; she _hasn't _any secrets, or any of the expectation we Blakes have that our expressions will remain politely neutral, and our glances superficial, and our speech steady and far away. May simply hasn't any _skin_. That's the best way I can think of expressing it. We invited the S.H., who was splendid and eerie as Lady Macbeth, but she wouldn't go—she and Miss B.S. and poor star-struck Mary were all wound up in one another like a dowdy little skein. They could just as soon have all come along, but I suspect Miss B.S. looked at the S.H. in a particular way and that was that. I am certain now she dislikes me, though I'll refrain from speculating for now on why that might be. Well, she might be politer about it at least- there's the Blake fetish for social propriety rearing its puckered head! Anyway, we had a splendid time with just the three of us, and laughed and speculated until nearly midnight. Mrs. Halloran naturally pouting in the morning about my late return, but I can't say I let it spoil the magic of the evening.


	12. October 31, 1902: Autumn and the Quill

**Saturday, Nov. 1, 1902.**

For the Eve of All Hallows May and Mary and I had a wee soiree of the masked variety, which May took as a golden opportunity to trash up (as "Marie Antoinette") and Mary to wear the shimmering red dress she loves that looks so dreadful on her. If only, if only. If only we looked like what we _are_. _I_ should turn a hideous ashy colour and be instantly kicked out of high school on grounds of no one believing I wasn't seventy—May would be utterly bereft of flirting opportunities due to her sudden and startling resemblance to a rattlesnake—but Mary would be beautiful enough to make up for us both.

We strode up Main Street in the twilight, arms about each other's waists, singing that inane and lovely song that every flour-clouded pie-seller and traveling salesman was huskily humming a few years ago- long enough ago to seem like a golden age of childhood, close enough to feel like yesterday.

_I love you as I never loved before,_

_Since first I met you on the village green._

_Come to me, or my dream of love is over._

_I love you as I loved you_

_When you were sweet sixteen._

Oh, don't make fun of me, stern Blakes of yesteryear! Be content to mock and belittle your own youth, and leave me to mine! There are worse things than the present to be nostalgic for- and I'll be back to my usual dour self soon enough, don't you worry.

The new_ Quill _came out Thursday, four days late thanks to the printers' traditional indifference to all non-catalogue-based business, but not so badly smeared as last spring's. And there on the second page, wonder of wonders, was your own Evie's own "Autumn Leaves!" It had a lovely swirly border by Irene, never mind that it put me inescapably in mind of a girdle advert - and not a single typo! I wish it had, so I could hate it with less reflection on myself. Why _does_ everything that sings in my head go dead on the page? But poor E.B.S. was so _extravagantly _put out it nearly made me – no, Diary, I'll be honest- it _did _make me feel better. I may be a failure, but I am a failure who has heard of the arcane practice of slant rhyme. And after I'd tried so _earnestly_ to make conversation! Oh, she isn't half-bad in all honesty, talent-wise, but she _must _learn a little restraint. Her infatuation with the S.H. is no help, for while Ilse has enough of a _vividness _to be able to get away with throwing everything that comes handy and tossing off smirking insults as common corridor greetings, a priggish, bony would-be pagan like Miss B.S. _cannot._ Oh, but she _tries, _she does. And the _passion _of it all! The poor thing can't take _any form_ of encouragement except as an insult, at least not when her precious poetry is the subject. I suppose she thinks they're delicate wafers of her fairy soul she's shaved onto our slush pile. Well, she'll have to learn soon enough, if she hopes to make anything but a fool of herself. When I suggested she make a little less a show of her disappointment, she just _looked _at me like she'd swallowed a whole bottle of Redfern's Miracle Emetic. _Dear_ Emily.

Anyway, I am not so disappointed as all that in my poemlet. It's not a bad little machine, and I feel it might have a tiny little bud of a poem inside all the same, if I can only flay all the _deadness _off it. How to do that? That's the question of the evening. It gnawed my mind all the while we were a-haunting, and here I've written it over and over till I'm sick of it. _Let it alone_, I tell myself- like Mrs. Halloran does when she catches me scratching at mosquito bites. Let it slough off its skin in a drawer somewhere, and come back to it in a month or a year. But it itches me _now, _Halloran! And picking it till it's red and raw _does_ give a kind of satisfaction, if not relief. But you don't understand a word of what I'm saying, do you, Mrs. H.? Nor should you. It serves you right for prying. May your bleary eyes burn to ash if you crack another page.

It's long past midnight, the taste of winter is in the air, and everyone else _must _be asleep- everyone but the cats and Ev. Mrs. Halloran, you old witch, I promise I'll go to bed if you will.


	13. November 4, 1902: Quotation Monday

**Tuesday, November 4, 1902**

I am reading a little book called _A Century of French Verse_ by William John Robertson. Alas, like so many other worthwhile things, it is Not For School. But I am enjoying it thoroughly. It is perhaps the best thing I have gotten out of Quotation Mondays since poor Frank McKay blurted the words to the Halifax Gentleman's Hair Oil jingle.

Since I have intemperately burned the old diary where the minutiae of High School life were so painstakingly explained (of necessity, so as not to absolutely mortify posterity with dullness), a little background: It is Vice-Principal Miss Aylmer's maidenly desire that we scholars answer Monday's roll call with a quotation. Nearly everyone forgets until the night before and then grabs something off the nearest shelf; the stuff of Quotation Monday therefore runs heavily to Bulwer-Lytton and the yellowing contents of thirty-year-old scrapbooks.

But now and then someone comes out with something _splendid_.

My sometime beau, the honorable and graceless Lurch Mackenzie (whom I _will _think of as Lurch for all eternity, though he is really a good enough sort in his own way) is studying for the Senior Honors exam in French, and I suppose he's crammed his head so full of French he hasn't room for English. The verse he recited gave me _chills:_

_But I pursue the fading god in vain_

_For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain_

He said it was from a French poet, Charles Baudelaire, and it was his own translation. "I think it's perfectly lovely_,_" I said. "Have you any _more _of his poetry?"

He said he had only the one volume, and no matter _how _I wheedled, he _refused _to lend it, saying it was in French in any case; he'd just translated the line out of his head because he couldn't think of anything else. But he gave me the Robertson instead, and I am happily reading about the lives of the great French poets— a number of whom are quite unfit companions for a girl of good family and assiduous Sunday-schooling, but enchanting all the same. I'll show it to Tom, but only after I've finished it- for he'll pluck it out of my hands the minute he catches sight of it. He _loathes _the thought of me "getting French"- count on Tom to get _nothing _out of Paris but a new prejudice!

I have decided to do a character sketch for each of the people in my life—all of them, that is, who aren't so dull as to cause paralysis. Tom has the honor of being first, because he's Tom, of course. He's two years my senior and we have been best of friends since he came to my rescue on my first day of school—lo these many years ago! Tom's good-looking—the Blake men are notably handsomer than the ladies, alas! – and cripplingly tall, with the long Blake nose and the rust-red hair of the MacLeisters. I used to say his eyes were exactly like mine, but they've grown up—they've drunk in Paris and London and the hectic, ancient life there, and _I _can tell it's changed him if he can't. We have the same freckling tendency and the same devastating wit, though _he _dresses like a blind man out of pure laziness and calls it the virtue of humility. It _isn't! _

Tom and I quarrel for two reasons: his lack of ambition, and my lack of contented stupidity. I _can't _call it anything else. He fully expects me to burn out on my scribbling within a year or so, settle into some paid drudgery until I wed a Mackenzie, and metamorphose into a dutiful Shrewsbury matron like his mother. He sees _no contradiction _between that happy fate and his oft-stated conviction that I am the cleverest girl he knows. He thinks I envy him for no good reason. And to tell the truth, I _am_ envious, for things come easy to Tom that are excruciatingly hard for me, and yet he dismisses them and calls them meaningless. He affects to want nothing but to have a good time, yet I _know_ he sends his _Quill _pieces to _Harper's _in secret, and is ten times more sarcastic than usual when the rejections come.

It strikes me now that I have begun to see for the first time how _young _Tom is. He was always like an older brother to me—not _quite _a grown-up, but ever on the border—mysteriously distant and knowing. But the distance between us has closed somewhat—perhaps just because we are both growing up. He _tries _to keep me out of his enchanted circle still, but I have managed to scramble my own way in. Or so it seems on _good_ days, at least.

Today is a good day, Diary—though I _won't _get my history composition written till after midnight. _Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between_. . . but I don't mind tonight that my pursuit be in vain, if I am _free._

(And what in heaven's name do you mean by _that, _young lady?)


	14. November 6, 1902: Dances With Kents

**Thursday, November 6, 1902**

Party at Jake McKay's winter barn yestereve for Guy Fawkes; all the High School invited, Preps included. I was supposed to have gone with Lurch, but his sister took the croup and he had to stay in. I suppose he was waiting for me to offer to help, but that's all a haze now; your Evie lacks the maternal bent, I fear. Festivities began at sunset, and lasted I know not how long- for I left a little past half one with May. There was a bonfire and apple-bobbing and all the works, though the actual Fawkes-burning was perfunctory enow- the poor old Papist dangled in the flames a bit and then fell in when the rope burned through. One quick blaze and 'twas all over for the Guy. We were all a wreck in school this morning and poor old Hardy raged at us for wasting our most precious resource, time. Time! Wasting! Can you imagine, Diary! That _any one_ should have the gall to want something other than algebra and sleep on the cusp of winter? Blasphemy indeed!

This time of year I feel I love the winter best, though I _know_ I'll have had my fill by February at the latest. The crisp air and the bright distant stars make me wide awake somehow. The absence of Lurch was a great relief- I should run out of pages in a day if I had to catalog all the significant looks he slathers me with- my complexion seems to have rallied from its recent decline- and my new jacket and box-pleats shimmered like the night made liquid. Poor May looked like the pink paper flower in a winter wedding- all crimps and ruffles and ruddiness. No one can say I haven't _tried _to tell her what calumnies those new chiffons wreak on her figure, and as for wearing pink, I'm _certain _she does it just to taunt me. Well, we had a grand old time anyway- save one unfortunate incident_._

Fred Kent, the "artistic" Prep from Blair Water, was hanging around the horse-blankets looking awkward, so I did him the favor of a dance. No scandal there! He's not strictly my type, but then so few of the Shrewsbury cubs _are_. Little Fred is somewhat more charming than the average, and pleasant-looking, if flimsy. And it must be owned he is a splendid dancer—far lighter on his feet than your leaden Ev. We took a turn about the floor and walked out around the embers for a spell and took another turn when the music improved, and sentimental soul that I am lately- and why _is _that, Diary? -I felt myself quite favorably disposed toward him. But! It was not to be! Little did I realize I had inadvertently stepped on a pale and bony set of toes- Miss Emily Byrd Starr's, of course! Our sylph shot poor Fred _one look _and he wilted like a season's patch of tansy. I suppose she thinks him her _especial friend_ and therefore bound hand and foot to her whim. Well, some girls _are _that arrogant, though I can't imagine where Miss B.S. got the notion_ she _was so bewitching. No doubt her _soul _is a rare and heady wine, but she _looks _like last night's cambric tea. The Murray pride, I suppose- her aunt Mrs. Dutton draws her head up in _precisely _the same way. What poor faded copies we all are, of what dismal ancestors!

In any case, I doubt it would have worked out between myself and Mr. F.K. even without Emilyan interference. He's a dear little birch and one of the few really clever boys in the Prep class (though his friend Perry Something-or-another is quite a bit smarter despite his dreadful poetry and his talking for all the world like a Sunday-school magazine story called "The Jaunty Bootblack, Or, Industry Rewarded"), but his mother is a fright, or so swears May Hilson, bless her unscrupulous soul, who has overheard the S.H. pontificating on the subject. Well, I won't go into detail about what is essentially third-hand, but if _true _it certainly brings Fred's personality into focus somewhat. It's well known she was a widow when he was born, and that's nothing if not an ill wind. _Why_ are widows so much more grotesque about their love than widowers? Father certainly never gnashed his teeth and clutched me to his bosom when Mother died. But widows are universally a disaster from Queen Victoria on down.

Besides, I suspect him of having _tender feelings _for the insufferable Miss B.S., and not even such sleek young-manliness as F.K. possesses (it is to be admitted, Diary dear) is worth such baggage. Ugh! There, I've written myself right out of being sorry. Damn them together in a wicker basket to play their childish games till doomsday; I shan't think another minute about it.

And _damn you, _Mrs. Halloran, if you so much as crack the spine of this book- damn you doubly, that is, for I have already damned you for your ridiculous note on the dishes- which were _not _mine, incidentally, and which I have returned to the cupboards unwashed. Father isn't paying good money for me to be your _damned _hired girl, and _damn _the fruit flies. I tore your note in fifteen pieces and left it in the sink; that's how well I think of your "shared responsibilities of this our mutual household."

. . .Still, Emily dearest, why begrudge the poor boy a dance? Fine show of jealousy from the bruise-eyed chit who was galloping about with every McKay and Mackenzie in sight!

That E.B.S. _tries _me.


	15. November 7, 1902: Disillusionment

**Friday, November 7, 1902**

Halloran in a snit. Phoned Father wailing over the dishes incident. Father apoplectic. _Dear _Father. When he calms down a touch he'll be proud of me for telling him in the most ladylike and diplomatic terms to sod off. As if washing some cow-faced Irishwoman's dishes for her were somehow coequal with "taking my education seriously." _Really, _Father.

Mary called, but I sent her packing. Could not _stand_ human company all day; read my little French poetry book and then Pope's splendid old _Eloisa _which I love wholly despite myself. When I was little I thought it would be the most romantic thing in the world to bury myself in a nunnery somewhere and mutter idolatrous prayers for my pre-emptively lost love-to-be (who at the time bore a suspicious resemblance to the captain of the North-West Mounted Police as illustrated in _Golden Days, _and was otherwise utterly without distinguishing features). Now I'm sure it would be exactly like a boarding house in which every single other boarder was Mrs. Halloran.

I suppose Father will have more bellowing to do ere long on the text of ingratitude. I've spoiled my little satin shoes for good by taking them to the barn party. I did so love those shoes, and they've lasted less than a month. What's more, I _knew _they would be spoiled, but I couldn't _bring _myself to put on day boots under my shimmering evening pleats. I know well enough I'll never be beautiful—I haven't any power over _that—_but I _can _make an effort not to be a dowd. If I _were _beautiful, I don't suppose I'd care how awful my shoes looked or whether my sleeves were the right degree of puffiness or my tie the right length or any of the things that make up forty per cent of any given conversation among the matrons and the maidens of Shrewsbury (the other sixty being comprised of varying parts open gossip and gossip disguised as pious concern).

I shall have to do a character sketch of Mary next—no, I think it should be May Hilson, who is my oldest friend if by no means my best. A round-eyed round-faced little china doll with the heart of a serpent, who lives with her stepmother and her stepmother's husband back of the post office, behind a little fence. How enchanted her house seemed to me as a child—what a contrast to all our impeccably angular Blake parlors and lawns—and I believe I followed her to and fro in spite of her abuse (she was forever calling me a liar and disinviting me to birthday parties on obscure pretexts) because I was convinced the stepmother was a witch. She _does _have a wart on her cheek—and a wild disheveled stare creeps in between pouts at times—though in all other ways Mrs. David Pryor is a model of Methodism and thrift.

Now Mrs. Pryor and her house are only overgrown and ashy— and the garden where I once thought fairies lived has an old washtub in it. May and I are prim and clever High School girls, and Mrs. Pryor has no secret pacts with the Devil in her history—only three marriages and a passel of miscellaneous children.

How dull life is once one gets to know it!


	16. December 5, 1902: A Nighttime Ride

**Friday, December 5, 1902**

Well, Diary, your Evie has been in a spot of mischief, Halloran be damned. Marsh O. showed up at the livery stable, out of the blue, and asked if I wouldn't like to go for a turn in the woods, not meaning any harm, you know, Ev, just a quick turn. It was near dark and I couldn't _face _holing up in my room studying as I'd planned. I left a note for Mrs. Halloran on my door that I had to dash to the library before it closed (as if the poor old illiterate had any idea when the library closed) and nearly flew to meet Marsh and his buggy back of the graveyard. On the way I had to take a sharp turn to avoid colliding with- of all people- Emily B.S., straining for a bad imitation of Wordsworth among a crowd, a host, of sewing-machine circulars. Hoped to catch a glimpse of whoever she was freezing her fingers off to tryst with, but after a few seconds couldn't be bothered. But _she _isn't part of this story in the least.

Marsh and I rode the woods all the way to the shore and had a splendid time. I had a few ladylike sips of good Scotch whiskey and got quite talkative- Marsh, too. It was the first time we'd really had a chat, just as friends, and I was surprised how well we got on. He'd vanished from school for weeks on end and was rumored to be courting a girl up back, but he hadn't been—he hadn't had time. Perhaps I'd been jealous- but _that's _so absurd we won't speak of it. Still, there may have been an unexplained trace of petulance in my manner toward him before I learned of the girl's non-existence. He's spent the harvest and all of November working on his uncle's farm, and last week he came to school and had a long talk with his old teachers. It's happened every year since he was a boy- some work comes in and he has to do it. When we set off, I think, he only wanted to talk about that- the situation at school, and whether I thought he could make up the work in time to pass finals this year.

But I went on talking, little fool that I am, and talked myself a long way from Shrewsbury High. I somehow couldn't stop myself. I leaned against the side of the buggy and giggled like a Prep. I said some nonsensical things about riding until we reached Toronto and he said, "But it's an island, Ev," solemn as a dozen deacons, and we both laughed so hard we could barely breathe. And the horses went on jostling along by the shore. The sea was so cold and infinite and lonely. And I felt I wanted to stay there forever by the sea in the sway of the whiskey and never have to return to Shrewsbury at all. I said as much, and my lips were numb, and we rode back the way we came because it is an island we live on, after all.

"But you don't really, Ev," he said. "You'd be cold out here pretty quick, and we'd miss out on school."

And he was right. I _didn't _want that- I only wanted to _say_ it. Mere versification for the _Quill_.

But what in Heaven's name _do _I want?

Riding down along the rocky shore, the stars all shivering in the perfect cold, I didn't want to think about propriety, Diary, or the principal dates of the English Civil War, or whether Kitty Barrett cut me out of her snowshoe dance because she thinks I slighted her brother at some Ladies' Aid pie dance or another. I want, by God, to be in love. Oh, I'm _not_! I couldn't be- I think I'm constitutionally incapable, to be honest. Some undilutable Blakery chills my blood. But to imagine it is sweet.

Yes, I did a ridiculous thing, taking off like that. No, I _didn't_ learn the way of a man with a Derry Pond girl- I heard all about that sad story from Marsh last night, and believed every word, and to my everlasting shock, I didn't care. He thought to marry the girl, but she wouldn't have him, and her father bundled her up and hauled her off to Nova Scotia, or so he said- who knows where it really was, what cold back room of what hard mainland hovel. I could feel sorry for such a girl on such a night- could pity everyone for everything, for falling or not falling, for being May Hilson or Emily Byrd Starr or a waitress in a Derry Pond hotel, on her own in the world for the first time with nothing but the Illustrated Shorter Catechism and a bit of tacky gingham between her and the darkness.

(Melodramatic Ev! How you'll laugh over your fine phrases when you're thirty- or eighteen, for that matter- but never mind that now).

Strange that hearing the truth behind the awful rumours should make me less afraid of Marsh than ever. He was fully forthright— courtesy of the whiskey, perhaps- and chagrined. I think he really did love her. I sat there by him imagining what it would be to really love someone, to be Marsh and to love a girl and to have her and lose her again. Poor Marsh. And then it dawned on him that he was _at that moment_ doing the same thing as before, that he shouldn't be there with me— sweet Marsh, so suddenly protective of my virtue! And I told him no one would know, and anyway, it _wasn't_ the same. We could be really just chums who have a talk from time to time. And for a moment, Diary, it sounded like the truth, though I knew it wasn't.

Well, now you know the extent of my foolishness. Skipped breakfast and first period of necessity, claiming headache again. Poor Mary has begun to believe I have a real condition. I must remember to make a slow but genuine recovery, or soon the whole school will think me an invalid and send me tacky condolence cards from the Book[e] Shopp[e] with lace glued to them. _Dreadful_ prospect.


	17. December 15, 1902: Nothing Happened

**Monday, Dec. 15, 1902**

Well, that little minx of a May Hilson, Lord love her, seems to have heard from someone who heard that MARSHALL ORDE of the Hardscrabble Road Ordes, was seen driving with A SHREWSBURY GIRL late Thursday night. Who are the suspects? May herself, who is utterly indignant at the idea, a certain redheaded senior girl currently a year behind due to an unexpected Vancouver-visit of some six to eight months' duration, and . . . the Scarlet Harlot! "Anyone else?" I asked, trying not to sound guilty. And I daresay if May hadn't been so knocked askew by the prospect of some piece of sordid gossip coming to land on _her_, she might have picked up something. But she couldn't think of a thing except it _wasn't_ _her_. Dear Diary, I can't say I blame her.

I said, "Dear, of _course_ it wasn't you. If they say it was Ilse, it was probably her. She's foolish enough to think she'd be immune. I doubt Marie would try anything so brazen after what happened last year."

This seemed to cheer her. "Of course," she said. "It would _have _to be the Harlot." And wouldn't it? Who else dresses like a music-hall dancer in the first flush of sudden wealth? Whose impulsiveness has cost poor Mrs. Adamson half her wedding tea set? Who cuts class nearly every week to go strolling the river with a Mackenzie on her arm and her chest thrust out like a brigadier general? Who else _should _it be?

She was so relieved by my pseudo-certainty that she didn't even notice I had gone pale, or how my hands were shaking. Her fat face was all alight with redemption. And she went off in a happy jelly of flounces to spread the news that it _was _Ilse. For what's gossip but armor against gossip? When are we happier and more secure than when contemplating all the terrible things we are not?

I can't say I'm not a little shaken- but I _won't _take the fall for this. _Nothing _untoward happened, and no one has any _reason _to know about the whiskey. And if the S.H. is going to flounce about as if appearance didn't matter, as if a respectable girl could dress up like a Parisian courtesan, swear like a sailor, and throw things at Principal Hardy with complete impunity, it's time she _learned otherwise_. I won't feel the least bit sorry for her if she _does_ get drummed out of school. Not that I think she will- it's hardly the sort of thing the Shrewsbury matrons like to advertise when extolling the virtues of the High School, after all, and without further evidence it's just another nasty rumor for a town that exports nothing other.

And really, nothing happened between Marsh and me- he's just a simple, sweet boy who likes me a little too much for his own good. What I said under the influence of whiskey and proximity- those were words dropped down a well, Diary- as these are- wishes in a well. And because I will not lie to you, Diary, I will say that there is a part of me- a tiny, recalcitrant, improper ember- that wished I _had _done. . . what I don't dare wish I'd done. Oh, not _really, _not in the real awful world where one has to live out every dreadful second in the presence of others - but wished, perhaps, for it to be possible. For the chance to refuse- anything, instead of having it refused _for _me by the implacable laws of girlhood and Blakehood. And in _that _wish there is the echo of the other- and a little of its dizzying gravity. So it is not true that "nothing happened." It is not true that I have not been compromised, for I will think of it in the black of the night and every poem I read will be tainted for days

But nothing is as possible as everything seems by moonlight. And really, nothing happened. . . less even than you are accustomed to imagine when you hear the words "nothing happened." Mrs. Halloran, you may rest assured that I remain a spring shut up, a fountain sealed, and the youth of Shrewsbury are so properly parched in my presence that the vultures circle their oily heads. I didn't even bare my soul the way I imagine I did, for Marsh doesn't know the meaning of half the words I used, I'm sure. I have a terribly intimidating vocabulary when drunk.

We _were _drunk- that much is true- no more than Tom and I get on Aunt Dan's blackberry cordial at Christmas, no less innocently than children on chocolate and peppermint candy. All I said is all that happened- Diary, you know I wouldn't lie to you!

To everyone else- to Marsh, to Tom, to Mary if need be- yes. But here? No. One must have a corner that is one's own, even if everything else is surface and falsehood.

_Especially_ then.

There, you see what nonsense I've scribbled in the name of honesty! Poor Marsh, what would you think if you knew the truth about what "lucky little Evie" thinks o' nights? Will you ever see that _you're _the lucky one- to be a laughing, beery, broad-shouldered Orde of Hardscrabble Road, and not a Shrewsbury Blake and a girl!


	18. December 17, 1902: Follies

**Wednesday, December 17, 1902**

I cannot _believe _Father. That he would _telephone _Kit Barrett's mother all the way from Vancouver to ask why I wasn't "invited" to her ridiculous frostbite jamboree is _absolutely_ the last straw. For all he _needles _me for not being as popular as he imagines _his daughter _ought to be, he's certainly going out of his way to ensure I remain a pariah for the rest of my earthly existence. And the worst of it is, no one would even _know how appalling he is _if May Hilson had the loyalty of a _snake_. I don't know why I put up with her sometimes, honestly.

I went in before exams to see Mary and May, and of course the S.H. was there, making a scene as usual and being utterly impervious to reason. Then Miss B.S. came in, equal parts smug and drowsy- for her aunt had pulled some strings to send her to Kit's party with one of those dreadful red-haired Murray boys- cantankerous old men in embryo- and Mary and the S.H. ran out on on some pretext and left me _alone _with her, while she pinched her forehead at me and made a show of studying.

I let slip that there was a rumour about Ilse and Marsh- and realized at once that I shouldn't have. Emily was _too _indignant- suspicious. But I was wearing my favorite stockings, and it is impossible to intimidate me when I am wearing my favorite stockings- however unjust it may be that _all _my best features are hidden from the general view- and nothing I said was untrue; Ilse _really is_ going out of her way to look like a wild untrammeled thing- skipping classes, going bathing without costumes, and heaven knows what else. In any case, I met Mary and the S.H. round the Shoppe and came back to find Miss B.S. fast asleep over her notebook. I suppose she was only waiting for everyone to clear out so she could have a nap! Well, Ilse threatened to put a moustache on her with crayon, but Kate Errol came by and wanted us to come _back _to the Shoppe with her, so the idea was abandoned, but Miss B.S. had been _so _haughty and prickly and offended by everything in the world that I couldn't resist drawing one on myself before the maths exam started- since Mr. Deckert never _does _manage to get to class within ten minutes of the official start time.

Of course I didn't expect she should run off to class and never pass a mirror on the way. I suppose Miss Prunes-and-Paroxyms is too far above the common for such vanities_. _Oh, how she squawked when I met her in the washroom! Heaven knows I was almost as shocked as she was. I thought she might have _some _sense. Well, the thing is done, and it will be good for her in any case- if not, I imagine, for her score in English. Well, live and learn and you might not burn, as the Venerable Halloran would say. Poor Emily! I imagine she's sweating her little Gothic heart out right now in her dumpy old aunt's candlelight. But it'll take her mind off the Mystery of Marshall Orde, that's for certain.

I'm certain to have aced English, and French is at least two-thirds in the bag. I _think_ I did well enough in maths- though I know I mixed up a few of the formulas. Mary is over now, wringing her hands over how badly she imagines she did, and whether Ilse's awful conduct with Mrs. Adamson- for the S.H. literally _slapped _Mrs. Adamson in the face for daring to suggest that she not stay out all hours and slam the doors on the way back in- will mean more scolding for _her_. There's no question that it will- for Mary is one of those obliging girls who provide a safe target for any and all pettiness and wrath. Mrs. Adamson, weak-willed landlady, won't cross Ilse again with any directness- but she'll harass poor Mary enough for both. I wish she'd stand up for herself once in a while- and that Ilse would _think_ about how her antics might affect other people, including the friends she claims to love so ardently, and that May would think about _anything_, ever, simply to allow her brain some exercise.

_I_ should wish to be filled with mildness and compassion for the foibles of others, but I can't quite yet- the thought of _dear _Miss Byrd Starr walking head-high into the classroom with that magnificent moustache on her lip is too delicious to give up for the present. Saint Augustine said something very similar, I believe.

Last exams tomorrow, and then holidays! Halloran will try to corral me into dusting the minute I open the door tomorrow, but I shan't let her take me alive. I'll lock myself in my room with a pile of books, and not even Tom will pry me out!


	19. December 21, 1902: Minor Mercies

**21 December 1902**

Praise be for minor mercies: exams are well and truly over. I aced English, scraped by in History, managed Latin quite well, and caused heads to spin with my brilliance in French. The others I passed, which is quite good enough for me and Father both- "No young woman ever made herself popular doing sums," quotha'. Count on Father to cut to the heart of the matter. Tom, meanwhile and on the other hand, has his star pin for the third year running and scolds me endlessly about not applying myself. Honestly, what does he expect? Is he going to bundle me up and ship me off to Halifax to be hemmed and hawed at by a lot of food-specked old professors for three years just so I can teach pedagogical methods at Queens for forty? From the misguided ambitions of pedants, preserve us!

Research confirms: Emily B.S. is _the__most_ hopelessly self-important person I have _ever_ met, and I am including all (approximately) eleven thousand Blake and John connections, near and distant, in that assessment. So much for family pride! I console myself by remembering that the Murrays have been a watchword for self-importance since Noah, and against such eminent traditions of getting worked up over nothing, my poor upstart kinfolk can hardly hope to prevail. Absurd Mrs. Dutton has forbidden the S.H. to visit, no doubt terrified of acquiring a (more defined) moustache of her own should she allow such menace to tread her hooked rugs, and is busy spreading the news that Ilse is an unfit companion for the whole range of Shrewsbury virgins, wise and foolish. Kate asked me about it this morning. In any case, poor Emily is in quite the state. She's passed me only twice in the past four days, thanks be to the Christmas holiday, but both times she glared as if she would set me afire. Really, it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Poor dear. And the S.H. is storming up and down the floorboards casting about furiously for something to throw- or was, before she left for home yesterday evening. Mary is gone, too- off to Charlottetown to cringe her way through a family Christmas.

This afternoon, Marsh nearly collided with me as I was coming out of the Shoppe, flushed and fairly doubled over with panting. He'd wanted to tell me he passed his exams, and someone told him I was at Mrs. Adamson's, so he ran all the way from the stable, pounded on the front door (thank Heaven no one was home), then ran all the way down town to catch me at the Shoppe, where I was out with May and Kate buying writing paper and a book for the holiday_._ Can you imagine the scene, Di? He was in shirtsleeves on an absolutely dead-frozen day, and heaving as though he were about to drop over dead- which for all I knew, he _was_.

"I passed," he said. He was grinning like a fool, and his hair was wet against his forehead. Kate and May just _looked _at me and back at him and began to snicker. He meant his exams, of course, but I was so caught by surprise that I couldn't imagine _what_ he meant. "Just come out to thank you for all your help," he said.

Well, Di, you can imagine my dismay when I realized what he was on about. I very nearly brained him with Mrs. Moulton's sonnets. As if he couldn't see that May and Kate were standing _right__there._ For heaven's sake, all I ever did was recite a few verbs at him at Miss Aylmer's behest and here he was, bright red and cold-sweaty with his fool mouth open, acting as if I'd nursed him back to health in a Crimean War hospital. The Devil himself never shot a glance like May's right then. And I felt a dreadful sinking feeling that I had overstepped a line I didn't know existed. Why did I suddenly feel so ashamed? My lungs already hurt from breathing the cold; I imagine his were like coals.

It took me a moment to realize that I _had _stepped over a line, and gone riding with him, and it was my own stupid fault if he thought we were such terrific friends— or worse. Well, a clever sketch artist might have had a splendid day's amusement with my face just then. But I rallied admirably. A Blake always does— it wouldn't be proper otherwise.

"Marshall Orde," I said, cold as Kenneth Blake himself, "you may convey your thanks to Miss Aylmer for recruiting me as your tutor. As for myself, I had no choice in the matter, so your thanks are misplaced."

At that, two things happened. Marsh's face collapsed just as if someone had punched him in the chest, and May began to giggle abominably. I felt I _had_ to say something else.

"I'm glad you did well," I said. But the frost was still in my voice, and I didn't dare try to soften it. "I'm sure your family is proud."

"They don't give a whit about it," he said sharply. "You know that." And I _do _know it. But what else could I say?

He stood there looking like a wilted oak, if you can picture such a thing, one oafish big shoulder drooping. I realized with a horrible feeling that he wanted me to say that _I _was proud of him. And honestly, Diary, in another place,_alone_, I would be— but there was no way on God's earth I was going to say as much in front of Kate, let alone May. Can you imagine? So I straightened and I smirked at May, and with my best most false smile turned to Marsh and nodded.

"I guess we'll see you in class, then."

May doubled over laughing, the heartless lizard, but I walked off as fast as I could without toppling. "What was he on about?" said Kate peevishly. "Who does he think he is?" Thank God and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence my face was already as red as it was going to get that day.

"I don't know," I said.

"He thinks Evie's his darling teacher," said May breathlessly. "I've heard him saying how she _saved _him flunking out."

"But he _can't _imagine you want to _talk _to him," quoth Kate. "He's got a dreadful reputation, you know. I wouldn't be seen in the same _room _with him if I could help it."

"Miss Aylmer _made _her," said May gleefully. "Price you pay for being a toady, Ev."

"Really, I'm shocked at Aylmer," said Kate. "I know she thinks she's too good to listen to gossip, but I thought _everyone _knew what happened over Derry Pond. And she told you to go off and _tutor _him? What is she after, do you think?"

"She was always there in the room with us," I said. "It wasn't as if—He's a good sort really, mostly" I said. "He means well." Now why did I feel the need to add that? Because it's _true_.

In truth, I was terrified that Kate was going to go off on one of her legendary gossip fugues- for she can talk for hours if something hooks her- and wind up back at the subject of Marsh Orde's wild midnight rides- a subject neither May nor I wanted particularly to speculate on, for reasons aforementioned.

"You better tell Aylmer he's got a crush on you," said May. "That'll get you out of teaching him."

"She means for you to go in for teaching as a _career_, I'll bet," said Kate. "She's exactly the sort of old maid who keeps protégées, I'll bet you. Abigail was one— Long Jack McKay's sister. I heard she near drank herself to death when Abigail got married. She's like that. Don't let her get after flattering you into doing things, Ev, or soon you'll be washing her curtains and Heaven knows what else. Marshall Orde, indeed! Why doesn't she do her own tutoring? Did you know he was drunk out of his _mind _the week before last, and took some girl out riding?"

"It was Ilse, I heard," said May abruptly. Poor, skinless May!

"It wasn't _Ilse_," Kate snapped. "Are you _daft? _I don't know _who_ started that rumor."

"I don't think Aylmer's so bad," I said- and said a silent prayer- and, mercy unending, Kate stopped dead in her tracks and smiled exactly as if she were readying herself to teach a cruel lesson to a child.

"_You_ don't know anything about it," she said. "My sister saw _firsthand_. That Aylmer looks sweet enough, but she's a _vampire_, honest and truly. I daresay she wrecks girl's lives just for spite, since no one ever thought _her _much of anything to look at. Remember Marla, the tall one with the glasses? One of the Burnleys was courting her back when we were in grammar school. She broke her engagement- or postponed it, maybe- because Aylmer pushed her to go to college. She'll never get married now, I bet you that."

May gave me a stupid, pitiful look of thanks, and Kate went on raging happily against the crimes of Miss Aylmer against youth and decency all the way back to the boardinghouse, and was still expounding on them when I took my leave.

"Well, she won't get _me_, I can tell you that," said May, with a toss of her curls.

"She doesn't like your figure," said Kate waspishly.

I felt glad to be free of them as I walked up the street and home, and lingered on the way as it grew dark and the snow swirled in the air. And I thought of Marsh and how much better it would be if he'd come to me _then _instead of outside the Shoppe- how I would shake his hand and say, well done you. For he _has _done well for all he's an incorrigible wreck socially. What is he thinking now? That he should like to wring my self-satisfied neck, I suppose. Well, he's right- not that it matters.

Despite which- or _because _I felt bad, perhaps- I couldn't help but wish he _would_ come along, though for the past half hour I had been grinding my teeth to the gums to be left alone. Marshall Orde, for all his shortcomings, has at least the refreshingly novel quality of being utterly inarticulate.


	20. January 2, 1903: Two Romances

**Friday, January 2, 1903 **

_Flower, stream, and furrow! — I have seen them all  
In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart —  
Though it be late let us with speed depart  
To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! _

Father's in Vancouver all winter with the firm, and won't be back till June at the earliest. Aunt Dan made a fuss over what she imagines are my feelings, but in truth it was a relief to be set loose in the family without Father hanging over me the whole time being watchful and wary and blusterful and asking pointed questions about my hat. "Are they wearing them high up on the head like that this year?" "Take care you don't waste all your time on that newspaper, Evie-girl." "Do you think that jacket _really_ suits you, Evie?" All of it accompanied by that breezy, sharp-edged laugh meant to bully me into pretending we were both having a splendid time.

I'd been dreading Christmas _far _more than the winter exams, but for once it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Tom and I drank the traditional one glass each of blackberry cordial and exchanged the traditional joke gifts. I can't say he put much effort into mine—a pinkish deluxe edition of _Elsie's Girlhood, _which I'm sure he bought from the Shoppe at half-past the eleventh hour and had Mrs. Forester wrap for him- but _his _gift took months of forethought!

Back before the start of the term, I had just begun to read into some of the bigger magazines. At the time I didn't dare tell even myself that I meant to _contribute _to them- heaven forefend! No, I was "merely curious" and "looking for a little light reading." Well, I was loitering at the Shoppe, scanning some purple romance and wondering what catastrophe had stripped its editors of all judgment, when I saw it. A full-page advertisement, caged in a border of dizzying scrollwork beneath a header as tall as my thumb:

**THE SLAVES OF BEAUTY ARE YET MASTERS OF THE WORLD **

**MARK DELAGE GREAVES- A MASTER OF THE WRITTEN WORD **

**IN HIS GLORIOUS NEW TALE OF LOVE TRIUMPHANT **

_The Lords of Salamanca_

A Romance of Medieval Spain

by

MARK DELAGE GREAVES

There was a smudgy portrait of the author looking like a mad griffin, and an ink drawing of a woman and a man handing a book between one another with those comical beseeching expressions medieval pictures always have, and the most deliciously absurd description (containing the phrase "passions unquenched by God or man"), and reassuring the buyer that the novel was "Complete in Three Volumes." Beneath that, in great hysterical black capitals, were the deciding words:

**NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES! ! !  
**

Well! I knew if it were as exclusive a product as _that_, it must be a right genuine peach of a book. I hastily copied down the ordering address and the cost, and sent away for it to some second-rate print shop in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It arrived at long last not two days before Christmas- gilt-edged, colour-embossed, riddled with printer's errors, and bound, as far as I could ascertain, with the illustrations to an entirely different novel mixed in with its own. I could barely contain my glee all through dinner, waiting to watch Tom open it. Needless to say, _Elsie's Girlhood _was soon forgotten, and _The Lords of Salamanca _stole the show entire, as Tom and Lila and I took turns reading purple passages in our most _ravishingly_ _dramatic_ Scarlet Harlot voices and falling over laughing.

That was Christmas. The next day I was obligated to ride to Derry Pond with Cousin Amelia John to remind the John clan of my existence. Cousin Amelia is seventy-one years old, never married, and host to a perfect orgy of maladies real and imaginary. I was given a thorough picking-over and the various parts of my face matched to miscellaneous ancestors, and kindly old Great-Uncle Aloysius John gave me a little white prayer-book he said was my mother's. He had meant to give it to me years ago but it slipped his mind. I felt a fraud for taking it, for I _know_ I won't use it to pray. The younger John cousins are all either new-married, about to be married, or six years old, and that is all there is to say about _them._ I used to have good enough talks with Sarah Geordie McKay two or three years ago, but she is engaged to Eamon Priest now and would talk about _nothing _else if the pigs were loose and the harbor on fire. If the entire John homestead were blown up by anarchists she would cock her head, scratch her cheek, and say, "Eamon won't _have _bombs at the wedding. He says the Priests _never _do. I told him I wanted _wild _roses, but you know how the Priests are about_ roses_." I was so hideously bored I was literally gnawing the insides of my mouth. Yet when I left she threw her arms around me as if we'd been pouring out our hearts.

"Ev, _please do _write to me," she said. "I've missed you such an awful lot."

I promised I would, and thought one can always _skim _a letter, and felt rather dreadful for thinking it, but what else is there to say?

Alas, I fear there's a conspiracy afoot with regard to young master Lurch of the Lower Shrewsbury Mackenzies. Lila and Aunt Dan, in collusion with Aunt Henry, invited him over Aunt and Uncle Henry's house on New Years- _without _alerting me, of course- and sat us together at the supper table. It's plain they mean to nudge us together, or they wouldn't have bothered- though of course they made up some convoluted bridge of second cousins once removed to justify the invitation. He's a "good family" boy and clever in school, and unambiguously taller than I in a way they find comforting, and as far as Aunt Dan is concerned a boy who takes a girl to more than four parties _without _proposing is shirking his duty to propriety. I haven't the heart to tell the meddlesome dears the mission is doomed. Lurch M. is a jolly, sunny, bright and clever soul with a monstrous beak of a nose and great long stringy arms like a spider's and lovely hazel eyes as shallow as mudpuddles, and I _like_ him immensely, but that's _all_. No doubt for some other girl he'd be a splendid husband. But it's impossible to imagine being married to him. It would be like marrying Tom. There's not the least spark of _romantic _interest between us- no, no, that's not true. _He _might try to kiss me a good deal oftener if I weren't so gay and cold to him when he did. What I mean is _I _haven't the slightest interest.

Not that I minded him being there in the least- we just played backgammon and sang bad songs about how splendid the past was, per New Year's tradition. So ended old, bedraggled 1902, and so begins the new year- blank as the snow before sunrise. Who knows what 1903 will bring?


	21. January 18, 1903: Mad, Bad and Dangerous

**Sunday, January 18, 1903**

Well, it's finally happened: poor Mary Carswell finally got up the courage—for Mary a feat indeed—to stand around Calvin McKay for twenty minutes until he asked her to go to the Ladies' Aid Pie Social. Try as I might, I couldn't induce her to be anything but ecstatic over it—though I _knew_ it wouldn't end well. Cal is what the High School fellows call a Don Juan—not in the Marsh Orde-Derry Pond sense, of course, but in that he lures girls along and amuses himself with them and tells stories in which they say foolish things and he responds with clever cutting ones. The foolish things the girls say are always true, or partly so— that's what stings. Last year he had the extraordinary cruelty to "do up" Kate Errol's dramatic love-protests in the school yearbook, rhymed and illustrated, for the "jokes" section. It was an anonymous contribution and no real names used, but everyone _knew_, and the smugness of everyone's horrible inescapable _knowledge _was far worse than if her name had been on it. And there wasn't a thing Kate could do about it- the teachers weren't about to _sympathize _with her foolish behavior being made a joke of- they would have told her it served her right for being a flirt.

The strange thing is, though _I _know this, and _Mary _knows this— for didn't we _both _spend half of last June dragging Kate Errol out of her crying jags- and didn't _she _spend the next six months spreading the news of every one of Cal's callous (and callow) affairs thereafter to console herself— and haven't I _told _Mary eleven times a day since we were wee bouncing bairns in Mr. Davenport's third-form class that she hasn't the sense of a when it comes to men?

Yet ever since November she's been dead stuck on Cal- "but he has such sweet _eyes_, Ev, I don't see how you can have eyes like that and _not _be good inside. . ." "but he loves _music, _Ev. . ." "but he's so _clever _and _artistic. . ."_ – as if one couldn't love beauty and _be_ a beast. Mary never _did _manage to learn anything from fairy tales but that they end in embraces— the cannibal witches, the ugly gnomes, the thorns escape her utterly.

I'll be honest with you, Di. I _hate _that Mary should feel any unhappiness, ever. She ought to have a charm of protection around her that turns the winter wind to warm perfume and the purple-pill adverts into lush and tender Renaissance madonnas—but as it stands, I am _glad _Cal snubbed her soon and unambiguously. I am _glad _she won't spend weeks or months building on her poor joy before he starts calling on Hattie Noonan or the Scarlet Harlot and laughing with his pals about her crooked smile and her hopeful gaze and her habit of gasping before she speaks.

Mary doesn't see it that way, of course. Cal picked her up half an hour late, danced with her once around at the social, and spent nearly the rest of the evening playing Postman's Bell with a mob of boys and girls. Mary doesn't play kissing games- thank the Presbytery, or she'd fall in love ten times a night- and she sat to one side looking terribly awkward and mashing her skirt around with one hand and trying to smile indulgently as Cal nuzzled and posed and pouted and laughed with nary a glimpse in her direction.

I tried to get her to sell pies with me, but she thought she had to stay by her escort, I suppose. After a while I left her side and Mrs. Tolliver sent Ilse and I around and around the room for an hour to wheedle the old men into wrecking their digestions. Ilse has been a bit on the outs with E.B.S. these days, which I can't say either surprises or disappoints me terribly much. I must say she's _infinitely_ more tolerable without Miss B.S. always hanging around her.

At a quarter past eleven he went into the parlor to buy one of the pies, and left with it and Ruby Mackenzie as casual as you please. Mary just caught the glimpse of them walking out the door, all giggles and _sweet eyes, _and she melted down in a puddle right there on the sofa as Dora MacNeil planted a hearty peck on Sam McKay's lopsided lips to the general acclaim.

Luckily Ilse was there to storm and shout about the hideous personal habits and idiocy of Calvin McKay, and _I _was there to be calm and sensible— and between us we cheered her up as much as humanly possible. We got her out the door and down the road to Mrs. Adamson's and plied her with the things she deserved and the good things she was and would have hereafter. At last we calmed her down, and Ilse told a tale or two of her own beaux, and of the Jaunty Bootblack, whom she heartily loathes. We had a good chuckle over the poem he sent to the _Quill _last term in honor of the Boer War's having petered out ignobly: "Canada, like a maiden, welcomes home her sons!" Yet he's a good soul for all that. I said as much and Ilse, true to temper, flew into a rage.

Kate, who would have only made the situation worse, was away visiting her sister the elocutionist (the same one she can't _not _mention for the world) and _May_, Lor' bless her, was perched merrily in the parlor playing Postman's Bell, and for all I know is playing it still.


	22. January 24, 1903: Ennui and Aunt Iz

**Saturday, January 24, 1903**

_Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,_  
—_Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!_

Baudelaire has just the right name for what I feel now- _ennui. _It's so much more _dense _and _molassessy _than mere _boredom_. I feel the French words have more of a _thickness _to them.

_Ennui _oozes over everything at the moment- I gave up on going to Kate's latest maiden bacchanalia out of general ill feeling, and I've been trying all afternoon to read and having no luck whatever. It's now well past dark and not even five o'clock, Mrs. Halloran is thumping pots and pans in the kitchen for some ungodly reason, and the wind hasn't even the energy to moan.

Now that we're back in school_, _Tom is doing his level best to maintain the venerable Blake tradition of being an insufferable prig. Twice this week he has seen fit to tap me on the shoulder in that affected way he's acquired and say, "You'd better focus on your studies, and quit daydreaming about things you don't understand." The last when I said - innocently enough! that I should rather like to get myself a rickety flat in Montmartre from which to litter the world with leaves of verse. You should have seen him pucker! And after he'd spent the whole hour of the Skull and Owl Society meeting jawing about "The History of the French Novel," aka "Tom Blake's Paris Days: A Retrospective."

"Tom, _dear_, don't smash my sleeve down," I said.

I hate that tone of Tom's. He doesn't even hear it. It's wormed its way into his everyday voice- he wouldn't know _how _to hear it. But later on we made up, of course- we always do.

Lurch, for his part, isn't at all happy that I've taken such a liking to his French poets, though he does his level best to pretend I _haven't_. "You don't understand a word of it, I hope" he says, and sort of grins in that nervous, lurchy way. To be sure, there are plenty of ugly, dismal, rotten things in the poetry of Baudelaire- far more than in, say, _Evangeline_, or even Browning's magnificent rages. But after all, there is something so dreadfully _reassuring_ about ugliness, isn't there? . . . Perhaps not, if one _grows up with it_. If I'd come of age a Hardscrabble Road ragamuffin, I should probably want to gorge myself on Longfellow and Tennyson until my scabby sides burst. But here in town it's nothing but primroses and hairpins, and I want someone to see the scraps and the rinds on the ground- or the pimples on Lurch's long face! So much of poetry is just utter falsehood and makes one feel like a spoilsport for noticing that dead things rot.

And there are beautiful things too, such as the smell of a loved one's hair, and the sentimental languor of the moon, and kinds of light in drifting dirty water, and other things barely glimpsed (through the heavy bars of my battered little dictionary) that I have never seen before in a poem, that seem to express the. . . _worldness _of the world in a way that thrills me utterly. And never have I read anyone so eloquent on the dreadful, slime-like _boredom_ of ordinary life. Or on a dozen other things that everyone must think, but no one would allow in polite conversation. I feel certain, for example, that he wouldn't be the least shocked if I complained that the gift of blossoming girlhood has just this morning stained my only clean drawers and left your Evie bloated as a bag of air - whereas even _you_, Diary, seem to shrink from my pen! I know _I_ halted more than twice when setting down that sentence! Imagine! How strange it would be to be able to speak _plainly_ sometimes. The aforementioned is _always _such a nuisance and it galls me that I haven't even the natural outlet, divine right of all elderly spinsters and phony invalids, of_complaint_. Mrs. Halloran tsked about the drawers in her usual cryptic tones, but cut me off saying a thing further about my abdomen.

Yet Charles Baudelaire, dead these many years, knows all about it. It's hard to say exactly _how _I know this- but I _do._

Now Lila and Livia are put out because I told Lila I rather like Aunt Iz- that is, the third Mrs. Henry Blake. It's not that I think they're wrong _not_ to- if she were _my _stepmother I'm _sure _I should want to poison her tea- but when I ran across her at Jones and Mac we chatted a bit and I was surprised how well we got on. Later in the week when I went to visit Lila she was in her usual superior mood, sniping and striking out at every little thing wrong with Lila's posture and skin and speech and figure- so much that Lila stormed out of the room in a rage. I was clearly supposed to follow her upstairs and spend the next forty minutes agreeing that Mrs. Henry Blake #3 is a monster, but I sat there for a moment instead, to see what the latter would do.

What she did was sigh, inadvertently at first, then again, deliberately and forcefully, and then again when I failed to respond. "What a spoiled child," she said finally, almost kindly. "I pity a child that's so spoiled. She'll soon be disappointed, if you ask me."

"Lila isn't spoiled at all, _I _think," I said. And I looked straight at her, which did not make Aunt Iz comfortable in the least.

"She's been petted and coddled all her life. The moment anyone tells her the truth she falls apart. You're not like that," she said. Then she smirked in a way that rent her whole forehead into a mass of wrinkles.

"One good enemy is worth a dozen bad friends," she said. "_I _find, anyway."

"But a good friend is better than any kind of enemy," I said.

She sniffed. I went upstairs then and didn't speak to Aunt Iz again that day. But I thought about her a good deal, and her strange stone-hard eyes and twisted-up mouth.

Aunt Iz has a long bony face and loose jutting bony limbs that must have been called _slender and sylph-like _when she was a girl, but protrude now from her dry skin as if her death is migrating outward. She dresses in expensive fabrics but always a little stuffily, a little behind fashion- not in conscious rebellion like an old church widow, but in innocence, like a child who doesn't know his face is red from jam or juice. She speaks evenly and her voice grows softer in anger, but her eyes are truly terrifying- stony and dim as a dead person's eyes, until they come alive with contempt or. . . something else I don't know the name of. May and I ran into her last week- looking absolutely dreadful in that pile of ratty furs she wears to show everyone in town she has Married Money- and were talked into following her round to Morrison's to help her pick a new bolt of taffeta to defile. And she chatted in her usual way about the things she knew and the incompetence of shopkeepers and what nonsense her stepdaughters chose to get worked up about. But when she asked after _The Quill_, she got _that look_, and she turned toward me with her lips half-spread in a grin, as if anticipating some childish foolish remark she could condescend to. But I was in a better mood than usual and I answered simply that the _Quill _may not be much, but I found it a sincere source of happiness and thought others did as well.

Of course she sniffed and smiled to herself at that inspirational bit of juvenilia- but how brittle a smile, and how cold! She looked grayer and thinner than ever at that moment- I can't explain it- as if everything had been spoiled for her long ago. I wondered how long she had been a teacher and how much she must have hated it for foolish, brutish old Henry Blake to look anything like salvation.

Lila says there's no excuse, that if a teacher learns she dislikes the work, she ought to quit right away and spare the children. She thinks Aunt Iz is beastly for staying at it so long when there are so many good teachers looking for jobs. But Lila is Henry Blake's daughter, and the Blake women, as your Ev is reminded fortnightly, are not under the necessity of working for a living. What was Isabella Brownell? Whom did she have to help her grow up and settle into a life somewhere? Where could she go, after the money for her education was spent and whatever youth she had worn through, but from one ugly country school to another, from one town to another, year after year reciting the same old poems to the same grubby, spiteful, slack-mouthed children?

Diary, I hope it's nothing like I've said. I hope the truth is that she was a cruel, petty-souled young witch who grew into a cruel, petty-souled old witch with nary a glimmer of beauty or hope to spoil the landscape. That's the world as it should be- clean, simple, and just.

If only I didn't know better!

Yet she's lively and blunt and fearless in small ways, and when Uncle Henry goes into his bellowing moods she simply cocks her scrawny hip and wags her head back and forth in time to imaginary music, which naturally makes him all the more furious. There was an unholy racket of this kind over Christmas- "There's never any peace now with _her _in the house," says Lila. Their mother was a quiet, sweet woman who cowered and petted and cringed, and their first stepmother simply went into the sewing room when he started in, and set the pedal going until old Henry wore himself down. Was that better?

I think I shall say simply that Mrs. Henry Blake is an _interesting person._

Winter is hard upon us and the Shrewsbury scene is duller than ever in its ice-bound and frantic gaiety, and _ennui _creeps into all the corners. But life has its little rosy corners still! If nothing else the sheer _tediousness _means I have been staying in a little and those leaves of verse I mentioned are not entirely in my head- indeed, I'll have accumulated quite a respectable Complete Works by April, if the Lord tarries and Mrs. Halloran doesn't mistake them for waste paper. And I am putting together a poem cycle that _won't _go in the _Quill._ If I like it enough by the end, I shall try to publish it under a pseudonym. It's a series of satirical villanelles called _The Lay of the Pie Social. _Tom should appreciate it even if he bristles (and he _should _bristle, if I've done my work!) at some of the caricatures. May will think it's funny, but without any clear idea _why_, Irene will sniff and say that my talents would be better used elsewhere, and Mary will think it is meant seriously and gush over the "lovely images." Lurch should get the joke, and Kate, after a little explanation, and dear old S.H. will roar with laughter from line one. As for the rest- well, one must _epater les mackenzies!_

Halloran is calling me to supper! Didn't I just get done telling her I couldn't _face _the thought of food today! But her duty is to load that table come rain or high water, nor will she shirk- all right, then, all right!


	23. March 7, 1903: Of Owls and Suitors

**Saturday, March 7, 1903**

There's a wide gap in time for you!

I've had my share of nuisance since we were dissevered, to be sure. It began when the Honourable Lurch Mackenzie began to be a trifle too serious with your Ev- and rather than straightforwardly talk him down from the precipice, I simply left off seeing him. I let Ray Sitwell- late beloved of Mary C. – drive May and me to some dreadful mission talk in Blair Water- and went in with the Denoons and Mrs. Alberta Burnley on an Improvement Society junket, and ran off with May to Charlottetown the weekend after to look at gloves and things- all dismally boring, all calculated to push Lurch back a step or two- the rather tedious irony being that I left of doing a lot of things I would have liked, in favor of some things I barely tolerated, in an effort to convince the poor swain I didn't care for him a whit. Now, does that make any kind of sense?

But what was I to do? The Mackenzies are notorious for preferring long engagements and young marriages, and Lurch for all his bohemian pretenses is Mackenzie to the bone. Of course none of that would have mattered, except that I felt it would have felt unutterably _perverse _to say no to Lurch, after all the time I'd spent with him, should he have asked me straight out. I knew I would _have__to_, but I dreaded it. So I made a tremendous show of not caring for him in the least, which is itself a lie- we'd have had a much better time than I had on any of my jaunts- and ate up all my time besides. Dismal business. But Lurch himself has got the message and is much less free of late with hands and astronomical observations.

I turned sixteen on February 18. I didn't want a big to-do; I went down to Mrs. Adamson's and let Mary, May, Kate and Ilse ply me with gifts and jokes and jabs, and May and Ilse got the idea to get up a game of Clap-In-Clap-Out right there in the back bedroom, resulting in someone's History composition being trampled. We did have a hilarious time, but odd how distant it felt, even then, as if I were already remembering it from long after. And then Aunt Dan decided I _had _to have cake, and sent Tom over to pick me up. Sixteen! I suppose I _am _getting old.

From Tom, of course, a _very__special__gift _from our new favorite master of the written word, _Mark __Delage __Greaves !__!__! _(I shall always want to write his name with several exclamation points hereafter). Tom dared me to read a passage from _A __Lady __of __High __Degree_ for the Spring concert, but I haven't the courage. I _know _certain Sunday-school sylphs among us would persist in believing I was serious. Yet there is something utterly delicious about Mr. Greaves for all his purpleness, and that _is _his purpleness- or rather his complete, unashamed, affectionate _embrace _of it. He is simply in love with the sound of his own voice, absurd and honey-drippy and incontinently sentimental as it is. Well, aren't we all! The only difference is, _he's_ simply never bothered to pretend otherwise. That other people might want to speak, or lack his own enthusiasm for melancholy noblewomen with alabaster brows, and pale youths grim of aspect, and convents that appear to be filled entirely to the brim with broken-hearted maidens of no genuine vocation- is a concept quite unfathomable to M.D. Greaves. I don't _regret _that I have managed to develop some self-awareness over the past few years, Diary- but I _do _wonder if I wouldn't be just a little happier with less.

Tom is quite pleased with himself. He _will _carry off the star pin for the third time, and run off to college without a thought of doing otherwise, and become a lawyer, I suppose- an honorable enough Blake tradition- but not one I can quite picture. And I have the dreadful premonition that I shall hate his wife. There isn't any reason behind it- simply a vague sense of how these things turn out. I do so hate to think of Tom as a middle-aged Blake _paterfamilias,_making some banal political joke at the dinner table while scolding some next-generation Tomlet for putting too many peas in his mouth. Yet it seems as inevitable as the world's turning.

"Evelyn, girl of the North Country," he said to me last week, "what on earth _will _you do when I'm off at Dalhousie?"

"The same as ever," I said. But it _will _be dreadfully dull in the S&O with Tom and Lurch and Irene all gone; the new batch of Skull-and-Owl hopefuls hardly merit consideration. The S.H. would be a good fit, Ron Gibson is a shoe-in, and Lottie S. seems ideal, though I only know her from last term's concert. I'd vote for keeping Fred Kent around to look at. Otherwise. . .but I don't like to think of it. Indeed, I won't think of it yet. We've months and months left to have a good time.

In other news, Our Miss B.S. has had a poem published in one of those seed-circular magazines they sell at the feed store. I found out about it quite by accident. It's a tidy, thrifty little piece enough, but quite unworthy of its conclusion. I was put in mind of a chick whose wings were still stubs, running and leaping and flapping furiously. It may well fly one day, but not today.

Tom, who is really quite unbearably pompous now, said, "Of course it's flowery, but that's only to be expected at that age."

_Dear_ Tom!

Given how much Aunt Iz _loathes_ poor Emily, I felt it would be amiss not to show her the poem. At first she glared at it stonily and decries the poor taste of the borders, but as she read on she began to laugh, showing all her big clumsy teeth. "Poor girl," she said happily. "Fell shadows of the hunter's _moan_, indeed!" I felt a little sorry for her then, forty years old if she was a day and mocking a schoolgirl poem as if it had _hurt_ her. It was the teeth that did it, Diary. I can't say I ever feel the least pity for her when she keeps her lips closed.

But I think I know why I like Aunt Iz after all- she's May grown old. Cannier and tougher in superficial ways, but unchanged in her essential, infuriating, ultimately crippling May-ness. Though it should go without saying that I shall shoot May myself if _she_ ever develops the delusion that pigeon-breasts are flattering to any single person on God's earth.


	24. March 15, 1903: Gardens Enclosed

**Sunday, March 15, 1903**

I must say things have come to a pretty pass when a Murray can't even be bothered to carry a grudge into the next term, let alone the grave. Miss Emily B.S., Murray by nature if not by name, appears to have forgotten all about that silly moustache trick she insisted on treating as high treason, and she and Ilse Scarlet are thick as thieves again. Pity, for I _do _like Ilse. I'd gotten so in the habit of going up Mrs. Adamson's in the afternoons to study with her and Mary and May that I didn't _imagine _she would freeze me out the moment E.B.S. threw a puckered smile her way (she _thinks _it's puckish, but it's _puckered _to the last; she'll be the veriest prune in the bushel once her heavy eyes have time to sink). Yet when I came up-stairs after the S&O on Wednesday she and Emily B.S. were neck-deep in some ridiculous argument and two breaths away from embracing, _status quo ante bellum – _ and took no more notice of me than if I were a moth in the window.

Something about it made me sick at heart. _Why, _though? Why should I _know instantly _that I had been shut out, and why should it feel so absurdly much like drowning? It's not as if I haven't plenty of other friends. Yet it _does _rankle, more than I want to make a record of. Of course it should go without saying that I was magnanimous enough to compliment _dear _Emily later on her inspiring example of charity and forgiveness. Equally superfluous to note that she went all watery with smugness and slitted her eyes at me. Dear, predictable Emily!

_Is _it forgiveness? Perhaps it's only a kind of gravity—those lonely country girls rolling toward each other from pure familiarity- a dim recognition of what a chore it would be to learn all the new in-jokes. Heaven knows I've hung on to friendships for less. Yet why must they be so _absolute _about it? Why should the whole substance of their friendship consist in ignoring others, or worse- _smirking _at them with chalky self-satisfaction? I don't care two dried figs for Emily Byrd Starr and never will; still, one needn't make a virtue of failing to notice that other people _exist_. It certainly can't bode well for Miss Starr's "literary" "career" if she refuses to have non-sarcastic dealings with anyone outside the Murray-Burnley connection.

Well, never mind. Yesterday I wrote a real story for the first time since I was a Prep. I'd sat down to do a character sketch of Aunt Iz, solely for my own satisfaction. I wasn't supposed to be doing any such thing, of course; there was a paper in History due yesterday, and for all Mrs. Halloran knew my lamp was burning for Sir John A. Macdonald alone. But there is a story behind my misbehaviour Aunt Iz was so utterly wretched to Lil and Liv this weekend- sneering and sniffing and insinuating that Livia only broke things off with that inane college cub Royal MacSomeungodlything because she was too lazy to start doing housework- that the only thing I could _do _was be amused.

Then Livia said that I was _always _taking her side, as if I had said anything at all, and indeed Aunt Iz herself seemed happy to smirk and nod and generally create the impression that I was on her side. Then Uncle Henry decided the same and praised me to the skies as "the only sensible one in this whole damned family," and Lil stormed up-stairs and Livia cried on the sofa like a child. And I – said nothing. I didn't even _leave_. Sat still as a stone with little flakes of narration in my head, little clever phrases to describe the red of Livia's face, the dishevelment of the antimacasser where Lil had left it, that strange, terrible, pinched look of Aunt Iz's- as if the whole dreadful scene were nothing but the fragments of a story. And- the worst of it is, I didn't _want _to stop it. I didn't _want _to leave. I wanted to soak it all up, all that cruelty and needless anger, and poor stupid Aunt Dan with her hands over her mouth, trying to stop it, and useless, ridiculous Tom declaming uselessly about what he supposed everyone else in the room was _really _saying. I wanted to see it through to the end,not for any _purpose _at all, but merely to _know _it. Isn't that abominable? I _knew _it was, and yet I felt I couldn't help watching it all any more than Liv could cease to be hurt and embarrassed or Aunt Iz to be petty and vicious or Uncle Henry to be a red-faced bellowing boor.

Finally Aunt Dan sent me home, her little fat hands fluttering with embarrassment and confusion. Poor Aunt Dan! I wonder if anyone warned her, when she was a "poor slip of a girl" of twenty, that to marry a Blake is to marry misery. I wonder if she remembers it some nights. "Stiff-backed cold-hearted people, those Blakes." Did my mother hear the same old saws? "From the pride of the Murrays, the wrath of the Priests, and the vainglory of the Blakes, the good Lord preserve us-" so the biddies say. But I won't think about it; it doesn't matter. She was happy for a year and a half, or she wasn't; it doesn't matter now.

But there is a point to this story, Diary, quite apart from my cowardice. I regret the latter, but- you'll see in a minute- I don't regret it nearly _enough. _When I finally got home I had a headache such that I could hardly see. I tried to sleep, but kept running over in my head all the things I _should _have said to Aunt Iz and Liv and smug Tom and solicitous Aunt Dan and horrible self-important bag of suet Uncle Henry- till finally I got up, lit the lamp, and wrote out my best description of Mrs. Henry Blake – jumpy neck-veins, ratty furs, wretched spiny hands like the inside of a piano. The plot just _grew _around it. And- and- I hardly dare write it- it's _good. _I am putting away for a week to see it it _stays _good. And the thought that it might _stay good _is a little thrill under my ribs that no amount of fruitless self-loathing can smother.

Today I'm back to writing little poems- well, not _all _little. There's a long one as well I've been fretting at- but won't regale you with the details as I'm not _entirely _sure I want my sophisticated future self to suffer the dread pangs of hindsight (very like a bad stomach cramp, in case you don't know). I'm just going to go along as far as I can, and burn it as soon as I realize how dreadful it is. Funny how I _know _it's going to happen though it hasn't yet- funnier still that I can't bring myself to be troubled by it. The others are vicious little sonnets on various feminine maladies- "To Neuralgia" being my current favorite. Pity they aren't at all the kind of thing one can _show _to people- but they amuse me, and that's all I want, really.

. . .

. . . Evelyn, you liar! !

No matter. May has come in, _thundering _up the stairs, to tell me that – gasp! The famous Miss Errol, Toronto elocutionist and reputed smasher of old-maidenly hearts, is _coming to Shrewsbury _next week to direct the Spring programme. May now repeating her intended concert piece in my mirror with many an improbable gesture. May is _destined _for the stage, you see.


	25. April 5, 1903: April Frosts

**Sunday, April 5 1903**

Sunrise.

No snow on the ground.

Well, Miss Aylmer's play has gone off- not terribly badly, either. The Queen's College Society was quite put out at the lack of opportunities for sneering. But I have another story to tell, for I've been up all night with it. The night began in misadventure and ended- somewhat the better for it, and a good deal worse. Mysterious, aren't I!

I'd planned at first to go with Lurch, but he was under the weather and cold to me lately anyhow, so May talked me into coming out to her cousin's house in Priest Pond for the night. Then I thought better of it, and told May I was going to stay in Shrews- I'd had two long journeys in the past four days and was feeling homebodyish. _Then_ I planned to go back to Aunt Dan's with Tom after the play, but on the way there he said he'd been up all night last and needed to sleep, so I decided mid-performance to revert to my original plan and come back with May, whom I fully expected to meet coming off the stage as soon as it was over. All that makes me sound like quite the hopeless flitabout, but really- I only wanted to be _with _someone; an evening concert is so intoxicating that I feel I've _wasted _something if I go home after, and take all my music and my thoughts to bed with me. Well, _and _I'm a flitabout, but never mind.

I meant to tell May as soon as we got there, but she was already backstage and Tom and I had to find seats before the lights went out. In any case, May _knew _I'd told her I was going back with Tom, and Tom was _sure _I'd caught up with May, and they both left without me before I came back from the washroom.

I waited a few minutes around the door, feeling utterly stupid, and Emily came by with the S.H., all bruisey glow and crimson. It _stung_ me to see them, Di, I don't mind saying it- for Emily who was so stiff and Murrayish in rehearsal all but burst into flame on stage, and Ilse, in all other worlds ridiculous, is unmockably beautiful before an audience. They _know _as much, and wear their knowledge like so much glittering jewelry, turning where they stand so the light flashes on it. And _I _know as much. What could I do but congratulate them both?

The sickening thing is, they didn't _need _my praise- they didn't _want _it- but it would have been dishonest to withhold it. Not that either of them bothered to act like a human being about it in _any _case- the way Miss B.S. looked at me you'd have thought I'd handed her a dead bird on a plate. And Ilse smirked and shook her bright hair like a spoiled child, and they walked past me with barely a word.

When it was clear May and Tom had both gone, I walked out under the moonlight, still anxious, still stupidly unwilling to go home. I walked up empty frost-hardened Main Street and around to the post office with its west wall full of advertisements, pouting bare-shouldered women with frost on them, smiling at nothing. Then I thought I would _walk_ out to May's cousin's after all, for I wanted to be alone and I wanted someone to talk to, and I set off across the fields then and there, hardly thinking about the cold or my stockings or how far it was.

I had just turned out of town when who should pass by but Marsh, bridle in hand and a peculiar look on his face.

"Out for a walk," he said, in that flat brick-like way he has of laying a question down.

"I'm visiting May's family in Priest Pond," I said. "What are _you _doing out at this hour?"

Of course he didn't bother answering _my_ question. "That's far off," he said. "You need a ride?"

"I'm happier walking, thank you."

"Oughtn't walk by yourself," he said.

"It's perfectly safe."

Now, I'd never thought a thing about walking at night, winter or summer- not that I'd done much walking over fields, mind. But the way he looked at me you would have thought I said the moon was a pig's potato. "It's no kind of safe to walk eight mile alone at ten o' clock at night," he snapped. "Let me get the trap and we'll get you there in half an hour."

Of course, that was too absurd. I think I said something then about the roads being frozen and his half-rotten trap ending up in a ditch, possibly including the near-certainty of both of us dying of exposure and our half-eaten corpses being found by a pack of grammar-school girls at some point in mid-June.

"Then let me walk with you," he said, staunch as you please.

"Don't bother. I'm not going all that way tonight. I'll just go home."

And he set his hand on the sleeve of my coat.

Doesn't that sound like nothing in particular!

But it was as though he had riveted me to the ground. I felt as though Mark Delage Greaves were writing my internal monologue- all hideous swirls of purple and red, unworthy of the name of words. It was far worse than when I went riding with M. last winter and thought I wanted to be in love, though I guess it was a feeling of a similar kind. But I am not describing it properly, Diary, because you should lose all respect for me at once if I did. And you know full well what sort of thing I _don't _hesitate to set down. So we shall leave it at that.

He kept his hand on my arm- not holding it, just _there, _and in my head I could hear myself screaming to _step back_. But I just stood there, and didn't turn away, and after a long while he gave my arm a squeeze and looked down at me as if he were really about to move in for a kiss. And _then _I stepped back.

It was only then that I realized we were standing in the middle of a field- Geordie Red McKay's pasture, to be specific- and that anyone passing for a mile in either direction could have glanced over and seen us. But there was no one for miles, not even the rustle of animals. There was not even any wind. It felt as though the world had stopped the moment he put his hand against my coat. And then I saw that his gloves were thin, and the knuckles under them red through the loose straining knit. I felt such a strange pity for him- in all honesty, Diary, I wanted to take his hands in my hands and breathe on them, the way Mrs. Halloran used to when I was little and came in from the snow. It was all I could see in my head- taking his hands like that. But I didn't- I didn't touch him again. To tell the truth, I was afraid to. Instead I slipped off my fur muff and tried to hand it to him.

"Here," I said- or something like that only clumsier. "You can take this for your hands."

But he wouldn't take it. At the time I thought he was just being solicitous, though perhaps he was simply loath to be seen wearing a woman's muff. I took it back but didn't put my hands in it- I stuffed them in the pockets of my coat. We walked the mile back to the post office barely looking at each other, and not speaking at all. My heart was pounding terribly; I don't know why. I know perfectly well why.

Just behind the post office he stopped suddenly, in front of one of those infantile smiling women who know the Ivory Soap secret to a happy marriage. There were icicles above us, deadly-looking spires shivering just above our heads. He stopped and said, Evie, and I could have kept walking home without looking back but I didn't. I stood where I was, only a few feet from him, with my poor shoes tottering on the ice, unable to move toward him or away. I knew what was going to happen and that I had to prevent it, and I knew that I was not going to prevent it, and he put his cold hand against my cold face and a wave of heat went through me like a bolt. I thought for certain he was going to kiss me, but he didn't. He took his hand away and tucked it in the crook of his arm- to warm it, maybe- and he looked at me and then away.

"Can I see you again," he said.

"Of course, I'll see you in school," I said.

"I don't mean that. Will you come out riding with me again sometime."

There was a simple answer, _no, _but I couldn't make myself say it.

"I don't know," I said.

He put his hand on my sleeve again. He _must _have seen that I was upset by it. But he just looked at me, steady, and sort of sighed, as if he'd read it in a magazine somewhere that he was supposed to sigh.

"I'd like if you would," he said. "Just a ride out once, once in a while. You're fine company, Evie."

"I should go home," I said. "These shoes. . ."

He didn't nod or look down. He could _see _how I was affected, that much was hideously obvious. It was as if he could see right through my skull to the awful fire. And I was shaken not only by my feelings, but at the utter _ridiculousness_ of them. I can hear you clucking at the foolish hearts of young girls, but if you knew me, you would know this is precisely the sort of thing that _doesn't happen to_ _me_. Skull Vice-President Lurch Mackenzie, handsome, clever, well-read- and what's a little lurchiness more or less between friends? can tuck his arm around my waist, can kiss me a dozen times and tell me he's crazy for me- or, more likely these days, that I'm a heartless flirt for speaking to him in the first place; choose your poison- and I notice it roughly as much as I notice Mrs. Halloran brushing my back with the wool-duster. But let clumsy Marsh Orde put his chapped hand on the sleeve of my coat- and my head is _still_ swarming with words so melodramatic I'm sure you'd never speak to me again if I set a single one of them down.

We parted ways at the stable and I tried not to think of it. On the hill at the crossroads, between home and the churchyard, I turned away from the road and hid myself behind an oak tree, barely able to keep my breath steady. What had happened? I didn't and _don't _dare analyze it overmuch. I looked up through the filigree of branches and sad frost-choked buds and saw the grey clouds closing over the moon, and I closed my eyes. The wind had begun again on the way up through town, and it howled around me and over the hard land, and I imagined I was lost, without a name or a family, that I had been born on that hill full-grown, with no knowledge of language or the world.

Foolish Ev. My feet were nearly frozen numb when I got home, and Mrs. Halloran woke and scolded me for not being where I ought to be, and I called her a senseless fat old biddy hen and went to bed. I lay awake squeezing my poor bare feet and setting them against the hot-water bottle and squeezing them again, and then I lay awake in a storm of words, most of them meaningless, and feelings, all of them inappropriate to my station. Then the sun came up and I wrote this.

I suppose when the story hits Shrews. H.S. and I die of embarrassment, May will come up here before the funeral, ransacking my papers for confirmation of her thespic genius. Well, I won't disappoint the poor serpent: she didn't fall down and she didn't forget any of her lines- and that's quite enough for posterity. (And if I _do _die of shame because an innocuous encounter was blown up by gossip into some sort of melodramatic fall from grace, May and Kate- and probably that pink-faced Prep Anita Ball- are to blame. No, _don't _look innocent at me, May, or I shall haunt you quite mercilessly!)


	26. April 7, 1903: Regarding Herring Barrels

**Tuesday, April 7, 1903**

The Jaunty Bootblack, Or, Industry Rewarded, has delivered unto us the most _delicious _plug of poesy ever seen. Of course, it's a spring poem, though the frost is still on the ground and the claws of the trees all but bare; they're _all _spring poems from March on forward. It's galling to read such a lot of nonsense about daffodils and darling buds l when our own ground in PEI is still frozen dead till mid-April at _least_.

We had a storm on Monday, and ice on Wednesday, and on Thursday the ice melted and made everything a great wretched welter of slush and mud. Then it all froze again solid for the concert, and it's been below zero for the past four days. Mary and I heard the cracking of the ice late last night in our separate rooms. Says she to me this morning—"Did you hear it?" and I answered, "Clear as gunshot," and we both knew just exactly what _it _was. Yet no one at the High School writes on that; once the Ides of March pass (in a blizzard, more than likely) there's nothing to be had in the whole school but peeping crocuses and birdsong and buzzing green as if not a one of them had an eye to his head.

I can _feel _hopeful when the harbor cracks, but reading reams of phantom thrushes and wholly metaphorical sweetgrass makes me want to go back to bed and pull up the covers for the next month.

Irene and I had a good old rant about it this afternoon. I wish she and I got on better. We've kindred _ideas_, but our _temperaments _are nothing alike. She _wants _to go to women's college and teach- she really would be happy with a pince-nez on, lecturing Alberta housewives on how to boil diapers, and half-breed children how to write their names, and all manner of practical and stultifying things- self-improvement for th e Marshall Ordes of the world. It's all well and good, but I doubt much will come of it in the end. Marsh himself barely squeezed by on English, and even if he did, there's a sense in which he'll never _really _be one of us-

What was it Ilse said about the Jaunty B? "You'll always smell the herring-barrels a little, even if he _does _make Prime Minister." The dreadful thing is, it's _true_. I _scolded _her at the time- and really, it is a terribly snobbish and _Blakeish _thing to say, especially considering her mother's people aren't _wholly_ known for their moral rectitude- but it's true for all that. There are things that can't be learned later in life- that _have _to be "bred in the bone," and of which even the jauntiest and most industrious of bootblacks can't manage more than a superficial imitation. Mrs. Reverend Tolliver, she of the shrill too-British vowels and enormous collars, is one notable local example- -always folding her fingers _just so _at tea to draw attention away from the fact she can't quite pronounce "Presbytery-" and I can't help but feel _in my sou_l that it would have been better for her to stay where she was and not try to drown her herring-barrels in imported perfume.

_(Do _I believe that? It seems as thought I should. Yet _I _wouldn't want to be dirty and ignorant, or to live the kind of life Polly Riordan did before she scrambled up through stenography school and was Tollivered white as snow. But would I be _better off_, if having been born a Riordan, I lived out my life in a manner befitting a Riordan? Would what I_ want_ have anything to do with it? Does it have anything to do with what I am _now?_

Maybe it hasn't. Marshall says he wants to "do his schooling proper" and "make something of himself," but what does that _mean _to someone who barely had two days of school together until he was fifteen? It seems to me that we are always what we are. A thousand nights riding down to the harbor with Marsh wouldn't make me anything but a shoddy imitation of a sunburned harbor girl, just as a thousand lessons on Tennyson won't make Marsh any more than a shoddy imitation of one of our college-bound Shrewsbury H.S. cubs.)

But I've neglected the Jaunty B— unforgivable crime! His _magnum opus _is called "The Old Farmer Sows his Seed" and it is four hundred lines long if it's a line, and wholly in earnest as one might expect from such a paragon of virtue as the J.B., and, it should go without saying, the most ridiculous thing ever put to paper. We read it over no less than four times and even Scofield sort of tipped forward laughing and made a show of throwing up his hands and walking from the room.

Now Tom _insists _that we print it in the _Quill_, and I am beginning to come back round to agreeing with him, after a brief boring spell during which I thought it might be cruel. But why would it be cruel? and Kit Barrett and Sally Martin and even dear old Lurch, God love him, hand us the veriest trash and we publish it without a _thought _to whether they'll feel ashamed of it by and by, and something as funny as _The Old Farmer _in a way is safer than these falling-flower and first-love music boxes assembled by Our Young People in the middle of history lecture. The J.B. _hasn't _any literary aspirations- he's only head-over-heels for Ilse and means to impress her by writing longer poetry than her pinch-faced best friend- _better _doesn't enter into it, I'm sure. For it would be impossible to have a working sense of poetic appreciation _and _write "The Old Farmer Sows his Seed." And if Sally isn't ashamed and insulted to have put her name to "The Innocence of the Child" and "Fair One Belov'd of Memory" _in print_, why should the J.B. be ashamed of _anything_?

Irene, of course, being the dour murderer of joys that she is, doesn't find it amusing or edifying and wants for Tom and Lurch to simply reject him. "He didn't submit to the Jokes section, but to poetry," she says sternly. Yet even s_he_ has to admit "The Old Farmer" is funnier than all the jokes put together. In the last stanza, the old farmer declares,

_I've ploughed and harrowed and sown_

_ I've done my best._

_ Now I'll leave the crop alone_

_ And let God do the rest_.

There, I've made up my mind to print it. The world _must _know. And poor Emily B.S. won't be able to say a _word_ against the rhymes!

Life at the H.S. continues apace. Roland Geordie McKay stopped by after Latin to walk me to the dreadful Thursday night sermon. I _wish_ he weren't so pious. No, that isn't it! If I felt _that way _about him I shouldn't care if he was; I should hang on his arm and _beg _him to expound on the Four Principles; I might very well find that I had developed a thirst for the spiritual to rival Anzonetta Peters'. I _don't _feel that way about Lurch Mackenzie, but I fell for Baudelaire anyway. But Roland Geordie is utterly without form and void. He plodded eagerly along on the subject of predestination for four and a half minutes, and then fell silent, and was silent all the way home. Lurch himself is still out with one of the winter 'flus; Mary has it too. Kate is in a black mood because her sister has decided to stay on and conduct a class in elocution. I sense a falling out between Kate and May in the near future- but then, who _wouldn't? _They've been falling out since the first day of school; they only needed justification.

Ran down to the Shoppe to get some new magazines. They've some lovely American ones, a month old, full of fashion illustrations and little snide pieces on the New York theater. The illustrations are lovely, but I loathe the faces of the women- all simpers and big black eyes and illiterate lashes, and _blank_, as though the features had all been erased. I like to read the critics and the gossip pieces and pretend I am declining to see all the mediocre plays of the season, and that I know what dreadful incidents were behind all the wicked and mocking allusions. May doesn't understand at all the appeal of reading about things one doesn't understand, and accuses me of "pretending to be smart" while also "wasting my time on silly nonsense." But it isn't that at all. It's simply a matter of being _curious _about things. I used to think May was curious, but she isn't in the least. Sometimes I feel as though we are speaking entirely different languages.

Here is the point in my diary at which I should exult again at the coming of Spring, and preach to empty paper that Spring is enough to make me happy. But I won't! I don't believe it _is _enough!

What, after all, is so very dreadful about being unhappy in the first place? What's so very charming and splendid about going into raptures over the orbit of the Earth?


	27. April 18, 1903: Four Days

**Saturday, April 18, 1903**

Greg Mackenzie is dead. He died four days ago, in the middle of the night, in a fever, or so I am told. I meant to write about it before now, but I didn't. There isn't anything to say.

I never went to see him. I never called him anything but Lurch in this diary. Mary came over the day we found out and I cried for an hour, but it wasn't for Greg. _She _thought it was- but I barely thought of him. Instead, I thought how dreadful I had been for _not _thinking of him.

When he was sick in bed, I was sneaking around back of the post office with Marsh Orde, like a little red-nosed Stovepipe Town strumpet, and thinking ugly languorous thoughts about it besides. While he was dying, I went dancing and ate pie and flirted with stupid Roland Geordie and half the Presbyterian Youth Council, simply because I _could_. I _knew _he was sick, but he'd always seemed so healthy and carefree I couldn't imagine it being anything serious, and I didn't bother to ask after him because. . . I didn't care enough to. Really I didn't want to see him at all. I was _glad_ he was laid up and wouldn't pester me. Well, he won't pester! And Mrs. Mackenzie acts as though we were all but engaged, squeezing my hand and saying horrible things about the afterlife.

_Everyone _is acting like that. Even Mrs. Halloran condoles me on my loss, and tells little warm-hearted dialect stories about my feelings on the matter. No one imagines what a pile of ashes I am inside.

Tried to explain to Mary what was really wrong, but she can't understand; she doesn't _see _things that are ugly or heartless and Evelyn is therefore largely invisible, our friendship a perpetual test of faith. "He_ liked_ that you had a nickname for him," she said stubbornly. "He told me so; everyone knows. He never had a nickname when he was little."

I don't think she meant to lie. I just don't think she was telling the truth.

But what frightens me most is the emptiness I feel at the news of his death, and the emptiness I feel when I look back on the time we spent together. Greg introduced me to Baudelaire, he said he was crazy for me, he held my head and kissed me in the fusty Mackenzie parlor to the sounds of his brother singing "I Love You Truly" off key, falsely drunk. I had a vague idea that he would propose to me before long, though I never let myself think about it- it was just a hulk on the horizon of my daily life, like Rupert McKay's old roofless barn. And I was always so gay and cold with him, as if I had to prove I could do without him before I let myself be kissed. I don't know what I'd have done if he'd proposed- I can't picture it. I couldn't picture living in a house with Greg, cooking him breakfast. . .my mind just goes blank. Yet I feel there _ought _to have been something between us, and there was nothing and it was my fault.

But why do I say "nothing" when we _were _friends? At least until he began to think he was in love with me- but it's repulsive that I'm still talking about _myself _and _my feelings _when Greg is _dead._ But I don't know anything else. I don't have anything else in my head. If I were a _good _person it would be different. But I'm not.

I, I, I!

This morning I tried to read _Fleurs _and couldn't. The thought kept jabbing at me like a hook, that when he lay dying I was out with Marsh, that I _stole _the poems _he _gave me and made them about some worthless farmhand, while he was alone and delirious. I was going around with those lines in my head, _Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse; Ainsi qu'une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,_ and _thinking _of other boys, boys I don't care about and can't care about and to whom I mean nothing, and _thinking _of turning them all into poetry- metaphors I pretend to talk to._ This _is what I hate myself for. _This _is why Mary had to hold my hands close together and lie to me about Greg Mackenzie. And he is dead now, really and forever. I saw him in his coffin looking so young and waxy and white and nothing like himself, and beside him his grim mother and his baby sister with her wide uncomprehending eyes. I _wish _with all my heart that I could say I was grieving for him, but I'm _not_- somehow my heart is dead and still, and I grieve for _that._

Sometimes I think I must not be human. Oh, Di, don't look at me that way- it's only a metaphor. . . I think.


	28. May 5, 1903: Some Flowers

**Tuesday, May 5, 1903**

_Quill _out!

Who would have thought the Jaunty Bootblack would be _proud _of seeing his poem printed on the Jokes page? "Looks like we're about even, Ev," he said to me this morning, all aglow and toothy, waving a brand-new _Quill _under my nose as if I didn't know what was in it. And here Irene was fretting about "unkindness." What does she know?

He went round showing it to all his friends, and the report is the Scarlet Harlot flung it at his face and ground the whole issue under her boot-heel in an apoplectic rage.

It made me feel quite at peace with the world.

Before the _Quill _went to press I asked Irene and Tom if I could put in a poem for G. Mackenzie. In a way, it was terribly selfish, for they didn't like the poem and I _knew _they wouldn't have let it in, let alone at the last minute, if I didn't make it a matter of memorializing. But aren't all memorials selfish? If it were just a matter of getting a poem in, I wouldn't bother. But I felt I had to _give _something, and this was what I had. I can't weep for G., not _truly_. I can't imagine that I was really in love with him. But I _do_miss him and Jen Mackenzie's poem for him was sweet, but not _enough_. This isn't enough, either. But it's an echo of what he _did _give me, those lovely and terrible _fleurs_ I can't bring myself to read anymore but are whistling around my head nonetheless. No one will know what it means but he and I- so it _is _selfish- but I'm glad I did.

What is there to say, really? Oh, everything- but I haven't the heart.

Emily's seed-circular poem was copied into the S. _Times_, in the section usually occupied by Francis Anselm MacDonald's metronomic patriotism. Said some innocuous thing to E. about deja vu which galled her immensely for some reason. I don't want to write of the funeral last week. It was all the things funerals are, only more so- wholly inadequate to the _fact _that someone- some jolly pimply boy with long arms and a laugh and a real name- who was never not present- is now gone. I grit my teeth and I sat through it and I don't suppose I _looked_any hollower than anyone else.

Today things are strangely- frighteningly- back to normal. From time to time it already feels as though he were never really here. I saw his mother in town on Sunday- I didn't want to look at her and then couldn't avoid looking at her and so I had to do the dreadful condolences all over again. She's lost two boys in four years, and the little girl is all she has left.

She kissed me and called me poor, dear girl, and said she would have been proud to have me as a daughter. That stung a little, Diary.


	29. May 8, 1903: Earth, Fog, Marsh

**Friday, May 8, 1903**

What else has been happening, you wonder? Oh, all the usual nonsense! There's been a really-truly thaw, the stubborn ice in pieces and floating away and then no ice at all, suddenly, one day a week ago, and as if they had been crowding the door of the world, sudden flowers everywhere underfoot and overhead. There's been a last run of the "grip" round the parish and two little French girls dead of it, though none of the Presbytery think much of _that _as they were only hired girls, and Lester Sitwell came down but recovered, and Kate Errol took a mild case and can't shut her mouth about it for anything. She's been really insufferable since her sister came to stay, and with good reason, as her sister is "a vision of loveliness" as we grammar-school girls used to say, and talented to boot albeit (I say in secret) in a showy, shallow way, like a hothouse geranium. She twits Kate mercilessly about not joining the other girls in recitation or wearing her hair too high or any foolish and mean thing that drifts through her head, simply because it isn't in her _not _to. And of course Miss Alymer takes her side in everything, and May copy-cats every word out of the elder Miss Errol's mouth as if she hadn't a brain to call her own.

Ugly spring is gnawing its way out of winter a'last. And a coarse, spotted, balding ugly thing Nature is, too— but a strong one, a glad howling bitch for all that. She's left a litter of tumbling blind crocuses under the thorn bushes, and limped off to soothe her raw yellow teeth on a maple.

Now, if Miss Alymer should see the above passage, I know _precisely _what she would say, and in what a wounded, wavering tone. "What good does it do you to dwell on ugliness, dear?" Or perhaps, in a more charitable mood: "Evelyn, I _wish _you wouldn't waste your talent trying to be shocking." As if the world were in danger of running low on _prettiness_. Heaven knows there's a Byrd Starr for every bird and every star ten times over_, _and such as these will go on chirruping and twinkling their dewy hearts out till the world falls in dust around them. She needn't be so _alarmed _if one or two raindrops fall from time to time on their great granite edifices of gorgeousness. But there's no sense in saying any of this to Miss Aylmer, who gathered all her tastes from upscale literary magazines thirty years ago and has no practical reason to acquire new ones.

Besides, it isn't ugly _to me_.

I'm rather earthily and sloppily unhappy myself this "difficult day," but that's no one's business but my own. It was a white fog yesterday afternoon, and despite the earnest pleadings of Nature, I went walking in it. Is it because of my own mental or subconscious confusion that I love a fog, as Tom might say in a pedantic mood? No; that's a bit of stuffy modern nonsense; I loved them just as wildly when I was a child and fit to burst with certainty. Anyway, I wasn't confused to any remarkable degree when I went out. I was, at the outset, merely your common or garden Ev: lonesome, wary, bloated as a sow.

_The western wind was wild and dank with foam,  
And all alone went she. _

I don't know if it was the fog or the wind, or a perverse sense of rebellion against the nuisance of my body, or simply that Perry "Jaunty Bootblack" Miller's absurd self-confidence has put me in a better humor than usual, but I set out for a turn around the block and ended up walking all the way to the harbor, where the fog. . .

All right, I suppose I'll tell you the whole story.

I didn't go out to the harbor by myself. I _meant _to, but I met someone along the way- Marsh Orde, if you _must _know- and it was wholly an accident, though I'm not _entirely _sure all of our meetings are accidental on his part. Never mind! Oh, I was a very good girl and proper, Diary! I didn't swallow any forbidden liquor or permit any forbidden arms to compass my ivory neck (if ivory can suffer freckling). We talked almost exclusively about the weather- the fog itself, and other fogs his father knew of when his father was a sailor, and some hail that wrecked the apple crop once in '89.

_Why_ did I go? Oh, that's easy to know and hard to write: simply, I wanted to enjoy a certain feeling. I wanted to walk by Marsh and feel the odd thrill of- what? Of attraction? that I felt the night of the concert. The moment he took my arm to help me in, I felt again the shock of fearful hope that came over me in McKay's field. I wanted to feel it again because I had decided not to be afraid of it. You see, that night I was dreadfully afraid that I would_ give in_ and let Marsh kiss me and end up in a ridiculous fix like May's cousin when she let Adam McKay think they were engaged for nearly a year- well, I don't need to explain what a mess it would be. But yesterday- I don't know what had changed, how what had felt so treacherous before suddenly seemed safe. It seemed as absurd to be afraid of it as of Old Kelly the peddler's senile flirtations. I kept a cool head and simply let it roll in, that feeling, like the white fog over the harbour. I only wavered once, for just a moment, when we stopped by the water and stepped out to look around. The sea was still and the firs bristled out of the whiteness over Blair Water in the distance.

Just then, for only a second, Diary, I _wanted _to let my head fall back on his shoulder.

But I didn't ! !

"It's very nice," I said.

"Awful nice," he agreed.

Then he said, "You're awfully fine company, Evie."

Which was an utterly foolish thing to say, and shows what an utter lout Marsh is _really_, education or no. I was _not _fine company and he knew it. I said barely a word to him and stared off in the distance, quite in defiance of the fact that there _was, _on this occasion, _no _distance to speak of. And all at once I knew that I had been wrong, that he believed something about me that was _not _true, and I had to be as blunt with him as possible or he would _go on_ thinking of it. I remembered the ridiculous story of May's cousin, who let Roy McKay believe she was engaged to him for nearly a year because she couldn't bring herself to say she _wasn't_.

I said, "I have no wish to keep company with you.'

That struck him down straight away. Perhaps it was unkind of me to say it that way. But it was _true. _And it _needed _to be said.

"Well, what is this, then?" he said- yelped, rather. And didn't I feel ashamed of having walked to the harbor with a boy who finds it necessary to _yelp!_ "Why'd you come all the way out here with me?"

Diary, I only panicked for a _sliver_ of a second. It would have done Father's poor cold heart proud to see me. There's something to be said for a long family history of rigidity and hauteur, isn't there? I simply _glared _at him like the grandfather of all Blakes and told him in no uncertain terms that he had _clearly _misunderstood the situation and that his education would do him little good if he couldn't learn to observe social distinctions with at least the sense of a common French hired boy. I may have mentioned Hardscrabble Road, customs and mores of, along the way, but I don't remember. It's possible I only _implied _it.

He looked me in the eye a little too long- I _know _I should never have gone riding with him last fall- but what does Marshall Orde know about these things? He knows enough of his own ignorance not to question me. In the end he shrugged and guessed he'd be taking me back to town.

What on earth _is _wrong with me, do you think?

Once I was away from him and back on my own street I couldn't understand what I'd done in the least. Yet in the cold back chamber of my brain I was _glad _I had gone. In a curious way I feel reassured by this inconvenient attraction I have toward Marsh, as it means I _am _capable of passionate attachment to another person- that is, to a man. (How gruesome that sounds when one sets it down plain!) That in turn means I might not be _wholly _miserable when I _do _marry. Perhaps that sounds like a dreadfully childish thing to say. I can't say but that it might be. I don't _know _what these things are like really, what to expect of the rest of life. I've a head full of fly-blown French poems of dubious morals, and a youth full of idiotic kissing games, a cloud of ugly faceless rumors, and _this._ If this one sensation gives me hope of a happy womanhood . . . perhaps it isn't so bad that I've indulged it a time or two.

But _that_ is a very cold, very small chamber indeed, Diary. You mustn't think I'm _all _like that, simply because a tiny, nearly invisible part of me _is_. And that is the last I intend to say on the matter of Marshall Orde.


	30. May 12, 1903: Divisions

**Tuesday, May 12, 1903**

There's been an awful "ruction" over something Miss Errol said to Alymer- no one knows what it is, but Anita Ball swears she heard breaking glass in the Vice-Principal's office and that Miss Aylmer was _sobbing _when she went out. Of course, Anita Ball's mother is the most unreliable old gossip in the world and Anita hasn't the sense of a wayward haystack, but one thing piles on another and it begins to seem that there _is _something to it after all, for Miss Errol left for the mainland yesterday, without so much as finishing her "program" of dryads and fairies (what _is _it about old maids that makes them so intemperately fond of dryads, anyway?) and without giving notice to Principal Hardy. Needless to say, the latter is rather put out with Miss Aylmer, and there _may _have been some talking behind closed doors, and Miss Aylmer's face _was _red when she called the roll yesterday. She didn't even correct Ray Sitwell for misquoting from "The Prisoner of Chillon."

May Hilson, desperate as always for someone to swoon over her, is claiming she _saw _it in a dream, and can't say two sentences to anyone without bringing in her Highland Scotch grandmother with the second sight, and how she heard some ghastly story by the way about Emily B.S. finding poor feckless old Beatrice Mitchell's body in a well. Of course, _everybody _in Shrewsbury has a gifted ancestress from the Highlands _somewhere _in their family tree, and they're all the _same _woman, likely as not.

In any case, the H.S. girls are all aflutter, caged flock of hens that we are. Kate maintains there is something unwholesome about the whole business- but then, Kate would maintain that there was something unwholesome about a Sunday-school picnic if they ran out of ice cream before she got there. Oh, I'd _like _a sordid story well enough- I won't lie about that. Miss Aylmer has galled me enough times that I should feel a gentle misty gladness at the thought of her having driven a popular teacher from the school due to poor behavior. But I doubt there's much too it beyond Miss Errol's own stubbornness and caprice.

May has enlisted me, rather against my will, to help her and Ray Sitwell and and Jake McKay plot the annual Junior prank on the Prep Pow-Wow, a task I sincerely looked forward to when _we _were pranked last year and sincerely couldn't care about in the least _now_. She's "dead stuck" on Jake, as we used to say, and leans sideways on her elbows something dreadful whenever he talks. Ray and Jake think it would be a good trick to fill the basement with rats or chickens, or flood it with water or some nonsense, and May is in no state to convince them otherwise. "Just cut off the gas and keep them from turning it back on," I said. Last year the Juniors shut off our gas valves, but Kate and I just ran up and turned them back on. The year before that, they simply locked the doors to the basement so the Preps had to pow-wow out on the lawn. But Jake's brother is ten years older than Jake, and remembers when the class pranks were really dangerous and foolish, and Jake is determined to do something equally absurd and secure a place for himself in the annals of Shrewsbury. Imagine if _that _were the pinnacle of ambition! All the McKays are like that- town-bound, Shrewsbury to the core. In their cosmology the Island revolves around their six or seven farms, and around the Island wheels the great clockwork of the universe. A cousin here or there will go to law in Charlottetown and be considered a great man of the world- or nearly burn the school down with a reckless prank and win the hearts of the younger generation. It isn't such a dreadful way to be, I suppose, if one is happy. But it makes me tired.

I liberated my country schoolma'am story out of the bedside drawer this afternoon, and what do you think I found?

It's _not terrible. _

If I wanted to completely spoil my luck for the next decade, I might even say it was _good- _but I won't!

I'm going to show it to Irene to see what she has to say about it. If _she _tells me to abandon it, I will. Look how my hands are shaking just writing that down! For I don't _want _to abandon it; I want it to grow and live. I've read it over four times and I can find nothing really wrong with it, and quite a bit that makes my chest burn with a weird half-hunger, as if it were someone else's and beautiful. If Irene tells me it's all right. . .

. . .well, I won't think of _that_ yet!

I _wish_ E.B.S. and Ilse Burnley weren't forever hanging around the magazines at the Shoppe- They really are a nuisance. Ilse sprawls all over the shelves yawning while Emily pulls out a magazine, flips to the masthead, scribbles down an address, pulls out another. I couldn't _help _making a note of it when I went in with Mary. "Emily, dear," I said, "what _are _you so absorbed in?"

Emily coloured to the very pinnacle of her forehead, as if she had been caught reading a French novel in the girl's washroom. And Ilse shot a pitying glance at Mary—she is _always _shooting pitying glances at Mary when we're together, and the poor thing can't understand _why_, so I said, cooly as you please, "Is there something _wrong, _dear?" and Ilse drew back on her long neck like a startled, gaudy bird.

"Your friend Perry Miller has quite a gift for comedy," I said, simply because I knew it would put Ilse in a rage. "Tom said he simply _couldn't _let that poem go unpublished. What's more, I hear he has quite an extensive knowledge of _French exports_." This was a reference to some ridiculous thing Anita reported him saying in class on Monday, for which poor dear Ilse was on the verge of murder. I must say it made me laugh to think of it. What a funny thing love is- if it _is _love at all.

Mary began to talk about a "lovely tragic story" she'd read last week, and had nearly got straight through the plot when I realized I'd read the same thing just Saturday- a bizarre, Gothic confection by Mark Delange Greaves (! ! !) that in her telling sounded quite different, almost sensible, as if we had read two entirely different pieces. "That sounds like one of _your _little tales, Emily dear," I said. "Why don't _you_ have something in the _Deliniator_? I'm sure they'd be _honored_."

"Maybe I will," said Emily. Her bruisey eyes burned a little as she said it, and she looked _straight at me _with that Ruth Dutton glare she thinks is so withering. I think she tried to tell me about some other poems she'd published in some other catalogs, but it was just interesting enough to register as a sort of shrill whooshing sound.

After a little while they left, in a bad temper as usual. Mary went round to look at the new _Ladies' Own,_ and I read the first pages of some of the blue-jacketed novels on the front table. Miss Taylor came by to chat and we all talked about the Greaves story, which Mary found genuinely tragic and Miss Taylor couldn't abide, and poor Mary was nearly in tears because we couldn't _feel _as she did the plight of the girl sold into marriage and her young lover of the river-washed eyes and the beauty of the bright banners and the moon with the star on its brow, and all the rest of it. "You really didn't think it was good?" she said, exactly as if I'd told her she was destined to die young. We teased her entirely too much about it. Perhaps if Miss Taylor hadn't been there I'd have simply let it go, but- it _was _a dreadful story, loose and bloated and full of glib deaths and desperate clenches and sunsets of a sickening richness, like Mrs. Tolliver's chocolate cake. Mary herself could do better. Though she didn't say anything, I felt far away from her after, when we said our farewells at Mrs. Adamson's porch.

I wonder what Irene will say. That I need to put it away for a year and read Montaigne, I suppose. Montaigne is her answer to _everything _these days. I _know _I won't sleep if I try, and I _have _tried, so I'm awake, reading my little Collected Browning and _wondering_.


	31. June 10, 1903: For the Record

**Wednesday, June 10, 1903**

I don't know _why _I can't keep a diary decently, Diary. As far as that goes, I _ought _to have been busy, but haven't really—oh, French and algebra and the like, and compositions for which Miss Aylmer and Mr. Travers have no use, but those aren't excuses, really; I shouldn't let _them_ stop me. It's only that the weather's been fine at last, and I don't _really _care for you at all when I'm not angry or unhappy, I'm sorry to say. It's been nothing but trying to study and failing to study and picnics, with the occasional scandal. The yearbook committee is making a nuisance of themselves as usual for June, and exams are nearly underway.

Irene is going for a Household Science degree at Redmond in the fall. Can you picture going to a classroom every day to learn to cook and quilt? I can barely stomach the thought when it's French and History. "It's practical for me," she says, "and I can do some good for others." I suppose I looked a little too bewildered for politeness, Di. I can't see Irene teaching Irish housewives in Saskatchewan how to boil diapers, but it's not _wrong_. I only supposed she was going to do something intellectual because . . . well, because she's _Irene_. But what _would _I have her do? She's no Miss Alymer, after all—Irene is _practical_. Household Science is a practical thing to do, and wholly suited to Irene, who is pedagogical by instinct but not wholly pedantic, pince-nez notwithstanding. It only _seems _a strange path for an Owl—but it _isn't_; after all, we _weren't _all going to be a pack of Brownings for the rest of our lives, were we? Wouldn't it be stranger for Irene _not _to do something serviceable with her talents? Anyway, it's better than being a dried-up professor somewhere, wearing a horrible gray vest and tight hair and forgetting how to dance, and writing ridiculous long letters to the editor about Twentieth-Century Womanhood and being scorned sight unseen by the likes of Ev Blake.

Liv has her teaching assignment already—a tiny pinprick of a settlement not far south of Tignish. Uncle Henry quite in a lather; can't _fathom_ why his own daughter should want to go so far from home, Charlottetown being _quite _ludicrous enough, but the thing is done. (Tom's spending a whole year in Paris, which if you are ignorant of geography is quite a bit further even than Tignish, has met with no similar dismay, nor yet Kenneth Blake's lengthy sojourns in Montreal and Vancouver, but some things do _not_ bear explanation, Evelyn). She's been staying at her boarding house in Queen's until she has to leave for the Cape, but she's back home to pack some things and make herself available to Tom and Lil and me.

Mrs. Henry Blake is in quite a winning mood since Liv came in, full of the same "mean" tales of the Blair Water and Bideford schools and their various scholars and elders. Will freely admit to giggling much over the poetic ambitions of one E.B. Starr, and the horrible story of being invited to one scholar's house in Stovepipe Town, which smelled implacably of fish and cowhide, and a whole raft of spelling mistakes and discipline issues—none of which made her look terribly competent as a teacher, by the way, but Mrs. Henry Blake is quite beyond such matters now. She meant it as a gesture of friendship, I'm sure, but Liv took offense; she's happy to be teaching, but the stories were dismal and disparaging to a one. What struck _me _was how badly she- Aunt Henry, I mean- took anything she loved being mangled and mishandled by innocent country children. It doesn't do well to be too sensitive about that sort of thing—not in a country school, anyway. Liv isn't sensitive about _anything_, though; I suspect she'll be fine. She'll marry sooner than Iz Brownell, in any case.

Tom shaved one of the old red cylinders and we made a record of the two of us singing, with Tom on the piano. We did "Auld Lang Syne" and "The Last Rose of Summer" and "Evelyn Hope" and "Girl of the North Country." Aunt Dan told the same story as ever about the day the phonograph was delivered, and eight-year-old Ev being _so determined _not to be impressed by such an ugly machine that she plugged her ears when the music started. I remember something of that feeling even now, a childish fear of change and of _music_, which belonged to _instruments_, being put in _canisters_ in a kind of thin adulterated extract of itself. Really, I was a querulous old woman when I was eight; I've grown a little younger since. When I think of some of the things I believed and said, and the way I acted around other children, I don't wonder I had so few friends in those days, though at the time I thought it _simultaneously _a great injustice and proof that I was the only child in Shrewsbury leading a decent and moral life. Well, that's as it is. Only it's a shame I can't come within two feet of the phonograph, ten years later, without one Blake or another reminding me that I wasn't going to have anything to do with such a silly fad.

We played it back for Aunt Dan and Liv and it was odd how unlike memory the record was, how everything was etched equally deep: the little explosion of my laugh when Tom said, _very seriously_: Mr. Thomas Blake and Miss Evelyn Blake singing "Girl of the North Country," and the hiss when I moved my skirt away from the piano bench, and the thump of the hammer inside the piano. Of course, Tom sounded just like Tom, while _my_ voice sounded nasal and thin, like a tinny copy of Aunt Dan's.

May and Mary and Kate are due over in an hour to study; I haven't been back to Mrs. Adamson's in nearly a month as Ilse Burnley's attitude has grown quite intolerable. Though I _know _she wasn't like this when she didn't have E.B.S. hanging over her all the livelong day. Well, what's to be done? I suppose she'll grow up _eventually_.


	32. July 2, 1903: Half Orphan

**Thursday, July 2, 1903**

_Magpie House, Derry Pond_

I can't remember anymore if I burned the part of my diary where I mention Mary Carswell's parents. They're no good; that's the sum of it. There were stories, lovingly recorded by Ev-of-old (smug half-orphan pitying a whole orphan with a faraway tang of resentment beneath it—I think—or perhaps I really was a better person then, and merely concerned about the facts, War Correspondent-style). Train wreck, bar brawl, stillbirth somewhere in Charlottetown, a long buggy ride over bad roads, a strange school. Her guardians are second cousins, I think, old and pinched—not old and fat and florid like dear _you_, Mrs. Halloran! How I do miss you leaning here and there to catch a word! I had it all down once; trees and everything. Names of foreign princes we waited for in her bare back parlor while Mrs. Leda Winter, _nee_ Carswell, scrubbed the kitchen floor with a sound like a panting patient dog. Secret true stories of European portrait painters, ballet dancers, take this child across the sea, stranger; raise her to beauty in the wholesome country air!

(Did I honestly burn my old diary? Why on _earth_ did I do that?)

Exams were over last Wednesday—the final for English was a composition, thank Heaven—and Tom is over in Charlottetown, clerking for MacDonald and Shipley for the summer. I wrote to him once on Saturday and again this morning in case Mrs. Halloran decides not to forward my letters.

We got a letter two days ago—that is, _Uncle Henry _received one letter and _Mrs. Halloran _received another, and Miss Evelyn Blake received a picture-postcard of the honored future Mrs. Kenneth Blake, a chinless child with a face like a loaf of bread, all stiff-corseted and stuffed into tight-fitting silks for the occassion.

. . . Yes, the _future Mrs. Kenneth Blake!_

Here is Father's august communication, splayed across the back of the photograph in a thicker-than-usual scrawl:

_Regrets I cannot be in Shrews. this summer due to wedding plans. Best wishes to Tom, Lil and Liv. Do buy something above and beyond yr. usual toilette with love from us both. Hat forthcoming._

Enclosed: One dried and dusty rosebud, yellow, from the engagement party, Vancouver, BC. Enclosed: Twenty-five crisp, clean, bright Dominion of Canada four-dollar notes decently swathed in a bit of brown paper and unceremoniously pocketed by La Halloran "for your Aunt Dan to take you shopping with."

_Much love & kisses, etc.._

_ Father_

She was so fat and smug with her bulging apron pocket full of _my _money I could have slapped her right across the great ugly ham of her face. Instead I snatched the letter out of her hands—she made for the money right away, so I was able to grab it off the table—and locked myself in my room. It was _my _letter; Father had no business addressing it to her. What's Mrs. Halloran to Father or to anyone in the world? If I were her husband, I _would _hang myself in a barn. The letter read:

_My Dear Mrs. Halloran_,

_It is my pleasure to share with you the happy news of my impending marriage to Miss Ada Shorn of Vancouver, BC_ _ this following September. Due to the wishes of her family, we will therefore be unable to return to Shrewsbury this summer as previously planned. Though I regret not being able to discuss the matter with you personally, it is my fond hope that the next few months will bring a welcome change from the privations of bachelorhood._

(Ed.: "Bachelorhood"? ! ?)

_The enclosed is for Evelyn. Kindly ensure that she spends it on her personal effects only. Her books and boarding expenses will arrive by separate post. I fear the teachers at the High School are inclined to permit the girls to neglect their appearance in favor of overstudy. She will be pleased to know that I have provided for a new wardrobe though I cannot help select it myself. Use the hat which I have posted express from Woodward's milliner as a touchstone to summer fashion.  
_

The hat arrived the next day in a prim, trim, pink-and-mint hatbox, just as Halloran was putting the dishcloths in to boil—a beautiful, rich work of art in deepest green. _Dear_ Father, who knows exactly which colors curdle my complexion and which make me look, in proximity, almost pretty. And really, Diary, the hat was a marvel. It would have been the most grown-up, and by far the loveliest thing I owned. To touch it was to rejoice in the glories of human ingenuity. I took it out of the box and stomped my heel right through the top, tore off the darling buttons, and pushed it whole into the boiling water.

Shrieks, outrage, unbelief.

There followed: some rash words about my mother (feckless, sickly, stubborn) on the part of Mrs. H. Some unkind words regarding the latter (perhaps including the phrases "boil on the face of humanity" and "go to the devil if he'll take a bag of blubber"). A threat, empty, to join the convent in White Cross. What on earth would I do in White Cross? Grow fat on plum cake and poxy with orphan spit without a spare minute of my own in which to teach the statues to simper, no doubt. A threat, only marginally less implausible, to turn up in Vancouver myself. And do what, pray tell? With what money? With what chaperone?

Spilled boiled water, doused fire. Boiled-rotten feather and silk. All that was two days ago. Dominion Day was yesterday. I was meant to go to the picnic and the boat-races with Mary, but Halloran phoned Uncle Henry and the latter came to bluster at me, and together they cowed Aunt Amelia into taking me to stay with Jen and Bill John in Derry Pond for the summer. I hadn't even the chance to tell Mary I wasn't coming to meet her.

I've a tiny scald on my maidenly wrist from that escapade, and a foolish wish to write Father and tell him I intend to become a nun and send his money to Foreign Missions, and nothing on any side but field and furrow and wildflower. I've half a mind to walk straight back to Shrewsbury and take up with May and Kate at Mrs. Adamson's for the rest of the summer.

But _only_ half a mind.

It's raining now—big drops that hammer the clay—and red puddles are swelling up all around my room—the spare room, because they haven't any other. There's a big picture of Great-Grandmother John smiling mincingly at something, and beneath it a sampler with only five stitches on it, and Grandfather's theology books, dusty and dense, on a dark bookshelf with glass in it. Jen and Bill are good sorts, though not interesting. They don't really believe that I did the dreadful thing I did. They seem to think I had a stomachache and need to be brought great quantities of tea and hot-water bottles. I'm to go with them to prayer meeting at the Derry Pond church.

Dreadful isn't it, that I used to burn up with envy of Mary Carswell and her dead, disgraced, outrageously beautiful and romantic imaginary parents—while I had only Father, black-moustached, towering and not-here-at-the-moment. Diary, tell me what a selfish, foolish, unnatural child I am. I don't really think those things – I don't! But I _remember_ thinking them.

Poor Father. If he'd _asked _me to come out to Vancouver to keep house for him, I'd have done it. He _ought _to have asked before high school started—they've schools in Vancouver, I hear.

I suppose he didn't expect me to stand for any such thing—frivolous Ev with her summer fashions and her _poetry_ and her little friends in Shrewsbury couldn't be bothered—or trusted. And he was quite rational in his expectations! No doubt I'd have pretended up and down that it was a dreadful imposition and a waste of time, and would have spent the whole train ride listing my grievances in ever-expanding detail. I _know_ I would have.

Of course he didn't bother to find out one way or another.

Kenneth Blake hasn't _time _to test an unlikely hypothesis—not when the woods of British Columbia are fair teeming with chinless womanhood. And for heaven's sake, Evelyn, don't start with your wheedling and your games!

I've half a mind to fish that hat off the rubbish heap and post it right back to him, and the portrait and the quick-scrawled kisses along with it. I won't, you know. I won't do any of the things I've half a mind to do.

Instead, I'll write a very proper letter thanking him for the money and promising to be his very best little Ev all summer, and not mention the wedding at all. The Blakes can do what they like about the hat.

Meanwhile, I stuck the portrait of the chinless child bride between two catechisms. She wouldn't be so bad if she weren't about to marry Father—a little round thing like May, pale and big-eyed like a Valentine card, too small for her clothes. Someday one of the little John cousins will be playing in here and find her, and be happy enough to mistake her for a splendid lady, a princess or a soprano.

Some lost, true mother.

A mystery forever.


	33. July 11, 1903: Poor Almira

**Saturday, July 11, 1903**

"Poor Almira John's house"

Little Shaw Road, Derry Pond

Things aren't so bad here. I was wrathful enough the first day and a half, and then I came to my senses. It's a bit further from the world than I like, but as long as I wash up after breakfast Jen and Bill let me do as I please. Once the rain quit I took a jaunt around the fields and felt almost at ease. There's a fat rushing creek just over the hill, and beyond it, a weathered old house, "Poor Almira's House," that Bill John's half-sister lived in with her husband before she died. Some of the girls used to tell that she haunted it, and if you slept there she would lie down next to you and put icy hands and lips on your body. Kitty Barret even claimed she had a cousin with hand-shaped frostbite scars from poor old Almira, but no one ever saw them. More likely her husband just didn't see the point in staying once she was gone. Plenty of people go west on less excuse than a wife's death, and I've been here twice now with no untoward incidents from the beyond. Perhaps I simply haven't the knack of attracting ghosts. It's a sweet, lonely place and better than the farm for writing and thinking. No one comes near and the wind nods the spruce barrens around the little dusty windows and kicks up cyclones of wood-shavings from the floor.

On Saturday we had a traveling preacher out in the big fallows away out in Saint Clair. There were people from all over, young and old. Poor dull Sarah Geordie, who's to be Mrs. Eamon Priest in a week's time, was there, shivering and fretting that Eamon wouldn't hear a word of it if _she _were to start moaning and grabbing her hair; whatever else you say about the Priests, they do make a fine big fuss about being orthodox, except for the one cousin who makes a fine big fuss about _not _being orthodox, and so on. In any case, there was only a moderate amount of moaning and hair-grabbing to be had, though the preacher was quite square-jawed and black-haired and romantic-looking in that tamed-Byron way. A number of girls were converted on the strength of his eyebrows alone, Mary not least among them- though of course she _would _deny it was his eyebrows that did it.

"I don't believe you _will _go to the Baptist church," I said. "They'd never have it. I don't believe they'd have let you _go _to the meeting if they knew he was a _Baptist"_

_ "Oh, _but _Evelyn," _she said. "If they could only _hear _him speak! I knew he could see into my _soul_!"

"Into your shirtwaist, more likely," said Kate waspishly. Do I _always_ use the word "waspishly" when Kate says something? I'm afraid it's simply her incontrovertible nature, Diary, and not truly a lapse into cliché at all. One must make at least _occasional_ allowances for truth even in one's diary.

We spent the night in Saint Clair with the Winters and Esther Carswell and hiked back over the shore hills the next day. Jen and Bill John aren't so tense about houseguests as Mrs. Halloran, so they ended up over here, and we had another convivial night of it, putting Cadogans in each others' hair- Kate couldn't _believe _mine was so dense or Mary's so thin; Kate being an extraordinarily incredulous specimen- and trying to conjure ghosts. I admit I felt more than a little silly doing the latter. I started school a year later than Kate and May due to simple negligence – but I've only really begun to _feel _it this year. Then again, it's a strange time enough for all of us. Sarah Geordie is only a year older than I am and about to be married; Elisa Mackenzie-that-was is only sixteen and married already. And of course L. has her school in Tignish. Meanwhile the four of us giggle and carouse and argue about whether or not Mary would stay with the Baptists and whether May was wrong to "go after" Martin Mackenzie in Postman's Bell after Jenny Macready _confided _that she was sweet on him. This latter debate nearly led to a fight between Kate and May over whether or not May was getting a reputation; I stood up for May, though I fear she _is_- and no one who heard us in passing would have guessed we were a day older than eleven.

Somewhere around the second midnight I was ready to be alone again, though of course I had to wait it out and chatter away through breakfast and see May and Kate back to the River Road crossroads. Then Mary and I walked back up the hill overlooking Saint Clair. I came back to Magpie House feeling as though I'd tramped all over the Island. I sat up all night last night reworking the country schoolma'am story. Irene didn't think it was half bad after all. I get a fearful tingle when I'm writing it, as if it were about to break open into something wholly new and unexpected. When I feel that way, I think there _must _be something to it—that I _will _be able to do something worthwhile. And then I think, "Stupid Ev; don't you know that _everyone _feels this way – Mark Delage Greaves and the patriotic scribblers in the _Times _and Emily Starr and all?" Then I feel foolish for having made anything of it in the first place. But _you _don't think I'm foolish, do you, Diary? No more than the ordinary run of mortals, anyway?

Well, it doesn't matter what _you _think; you're nothing but an old ledger-book.

School and winter seem like a distant dream already, and I'm glad to be out of it. When I think back on myself as a Prep all wide-eyed and ready to drink in the wisdom of the ages, I laugh. Oh, I've learned plenty- but not so much in the way of Algebra and Latin declensions. Still, one year more, and then-

And then? Freedom and fame, those twin delusions of childhood? More probably, the dignity of womanhood afforded Mrs._ _ _? Or, more probable still, a hasty exam season, a one-room school back of the lobster cages and board at some farmer's widow's frilly manse. Or, in dogged pursuit of the phantom independence, a dreadful piddling "career girl" position checking legal documents and a back room in a flea-infested Charlottetown or Boston or Halifax bed-and-breakfast, to be abandoned for the bosom of Halloran in a rage of boredom and humiliation half a year later.

In honesty, I've so little _real_ sense of the future that I don't like to think of this being my last year at the H.S.. It's one thing to dream of love or the garret, and quite another to-

No! I won't spoil my good mood with practicalities!


	34. July 22, 1903: Mammon

**Wed., July 22, 1903**

Magpie House

_Guess _who's in Derry Pond for the summer, Diary.

_Guess_.

You won't, and I'm sworn never to mention his name again _anyway, _but it was terribly funny to see him all the same. I guess Malcolm Shaw is having some extra help out to help with preparing the land around Poor Almira's House, and he's hired on with some of the others from around Hardscrabble. I mean Marshall Orde, of course. And didn't we _both_ get a shock when he swung that door open to find me seated at the kitchen table, scribbling away at a letter? There was a second or two of awful silence during which time "my heart skipped a beat," as they say. The funny thing about clichés is that you can go for years thinking, "What a silly old phrase. That makes no sense at all." Then one day it _happens_. And you wonder how on earth else you _would _say it.

As for M., I think he was a little disappointed when he realized I _wasn't _Poor Almira's ghost.

A little over a week ago, I had a brainstorm. I'd been worrying about futures and livings and whether Father would go on supporting me and whether he _ought _to, and I decided to give up fretting and _do _something. After breakfast I had Bill John drive me into Shrewsbury on the pretext of getting a few patterns for the fall. While I was there, I walked right over to the _Times _offices and asked to see Mr. Towers. He and Father were old school friends, and one _would_ expect him to humour Kenneth Blake's only begotten daughter, wouldn't one?

I said, "What the paper needs is a _local _fashion reporter. Father keeps me subscribed to the Vancouver, New York _and _Boston magazines, and I have a better eye than most for what will seem necessary in a month."

He said, "Is that why you boiled his present?"

I'm certain I went red to the ears, Di, but I held my ground. I said, "Mr. Towers, I don't believe that's at all germane to the issue. Besides," I added, with a fraction of a smile, "true artists are always a little impulsive, don't you think? Just think of all the vases dear Miss Burnley has broken since coming to Shrewsbury. Yet she's the jewel of all our concerts, and still only a Junior."

"If I thought you were a true artist, Miss Blake, I would send you away without speaking to you," said Mr. Towers irritably. "We've no time for that here."

"You're right," I said. Even though it was only a joke it the _first _place, I nearly turned icicle and walked out. I didn't, though! I thought, 'It doesn't matter what Mr. Towers thinks. I'm not here for _anything _but to make a little money.' "I'm not an artist of any kind. But I _can _write a little and I _do _know about fashion."

He made that stilted exasperated face such men always seem to have perpetually in waiting behind all other expressions. "Mrs. Black does the women's pages," he said, as if that settled it.

"Mrs. Black is over forty years old," I countered. "Young people have other perspectives."

At last he told me to post three columns to him by Friday and we'd see. I suspect he _was _merely humoring Father from afar, but then, there must have been something he liked about my columns after all—or else he doesn't care one way or the other what goes into the women's pages; it's all the same to _me._ This morning I found on the kitchen table the women's page of the _Times_, with my columns (under the name "Cynthia") and one twenty-five cent note! The note from Mr. Towers' secretary said simply, "Fewer words next time." I could have shaken my head off dancing round the kitchen in my stockings. _Was_ it only because he feels sorry for Father? No, no, I don't care! I put the note away very carefully in my lock-box and I shan't tell anyone what it's _for _yet- not even _you_, Diary, for I'm too superstitious. But it _is_ encouraging news!

I know quite enough to know that twenty-five cents isn't much for three columns, either- but it's a start, isn't it?

I've one other plan for making some dollars, and I _will _tell you that, for it's a funny one. The Gulf _Mercenary _is a four-page rag in dense blurry print that covers balls, society dinners, claims of the paranormal, and thinly-veiled gossip. It's terribly popular, though, as the notes come in from all over the Maritimes and as far up the coast as Newfoundland, any one of its readers is going to be unfamiliar with 95 to 99 per cent of the parties mentioned. I've sent them two items of interest, one concerning the alleged indiscretions of a certain romantical Vice-Principal, and one a bit of recycled nonsense about one of the red-headed Murray heirs having fathered a cherubic little boy in Stovepipe Town. As per _Mercenary _policy, initials and epithets only. If they print both, I'll have twenty cents for my troubles, and if they're not _too _picky about verifiable claims, I might become a regular informant. May is already helping me cook up stories of varying kind and location, some more or less based on truth, others pure invention. Thus far, we've attributed scandalous doings and/or successful séances to "a brash young preacher of D.P., North Shore," "a certain well-rounded widow of respectable family." "an otherwise prim young schoolmistress in Bedeque" and "an intrepid coven of sprightly young girls, possibly including the promising golden-haired actress Miss B." I promised May she'd have half the profit of anything she helped to come up with- but it remains to be seen whether they'll take the first two. We had a grand old time trying, though, and perhaps I'll poke a few dollars into my unacceptably sylph-like purse yet.


	35. August 1, 1903: Infidelities

**Saturday, August 1, 1903**

Mary in tears in poor Cousin Jen's drawing-room; I've just run up to get the scrapbook so we can do something foolish with old magazines and drive away the howlers. It's a foolish, childish thing really; all our sorrows foolish and childish- scrumptious Baptist preacher turned out not to be a Baptist after all,_ or_ a preacher; Mary near alienated her guardians over him before we found out; gave away all her Mission Fund to his eyebrows, in the name of a Great Revival- but must run.

Later.

It was a very foolish thing, I know, that traveling preacher and his nonsense-sermon, but we all fell for it to one degree or another. _I _did. I won't pretend I was immune. And it wasn't so bad for _us _as for certain Saint Clair matrons known to rumour, but it's been bad enough for poor Mary. She'd spent a week pleading with the Winters in the name of in the name of spiritual love and the fire of baptism, to be allowed to turn over even part of her little legacy to the Revival, and said a good many ignorant and childish things about the church and its modern shortcomings in the process. Winters are understandably put out, and want her to make up the Mission Fund money somehow, and have even threatened to pull her_ out _of school with one year left, and sent her to work out in Boston. Mary's all in a panic, though I _don't _believe they'd really do it. Sending a child like Mary alone to Boston would be throwing her to the wolves. I should think the Carswells have a _little_ more pride than that, even if Leslie Winter hasn't.

Did I say a word of I-told-you-so? No, not one! But perhaps I _thought_ a few.

Mary says the worst of it was she never _thought _of a revival, or any need for one whatever, until that false Baptist turned up with his shivery sensual voice and his eyebrows. But they _were _such magnificent eyebrows! I'm lucky I'm a cold fish, Di, or I'd have nothing to show for all my industry.

Oh, that's terribly disingenuous of me to say- for I'm _not_- but in a way it isn't disingenuous because it doesn't matter a bit that I'm not.

I helped Jen with the baking this morning, before Mary came, and felt very near to useful, though the bread didn't rise quite as it ought. Mary was in a state. She'd flown from May's cousin's, where she'd been staying; it was Anita Bell, that batting-brained little gossip, who spread the news that our Baptist had taken all the money he'd collected for his Revival and booked it to Boston on a spree. Some inspectors were down to interrogate some of the Saint Clair people about it, and they came to the Winters', and Mary couldn't face them in the least, so she slipped away. Of course they were in a panic over her disappearing and there was a dreadful scene.

In other news, poor Sarah Geordie's wedding went off as well as can be expected, Priests being Priests and Sarah being a meek little thin-necked thing with no backbone or opinions.

There were about five too many bridesmaids in the affair, and because there _were _so many, the ones who _hadn't _been asked felt fully justified in making a fuss about it. Of course it's to be expected of _anyone_ having such an absurd number of relations, not to mention the clamjamfry of Priests to contend with. No one could possibly have been satisfied. Her new mother-in-law pecked at her mercilessly the whole while, and poor Sarah couldn't _go _anywhere. The famous Eamon, of infinitely particular opinions, is a pudgy, sallow chap of about twenty or twenty-one, with sunken eyes, whose natural expression is a sort of painfully self-satisfied scowl, as if he were forever congratulating the world on living up to his low expectation of it.

On the whole, it was a dismal affair, though Sarah Geordie was the tiniest bit touching in her overwrought Priest veil and the handed-down-from-Eamon's-grandmother gown that fit her so ill she looked like a sausage in a yellow-ivory casing. But I caught a glimpse of the famous infidel Priest, who gallivants all over the world picking up rare diseases and trinkets and smiling sarcastically at history. He's a poor-looking specimen enough, with the garish green eyes common to the Priest connection and a bad twist in his spine that makes him thump about decisively, and (I imagine) something of the libertine in his manner. Kate claims he's seen the Black Mass performed, and while I don't believe it in the least, I couldn't help staring at him through the ceremony, and with a terrible, delicious fear that the moment I caught his eye I would _ask _him about it. Well, wouldn't _you _want to know what it was like? I confess I imagined the old sinner telling me all manner of things – I suppose I imagined an infidel to be free of the usual strictures concerning conversation with young girls of good family, and that he should happily regale me with tales of Alexandrian brothels and the like until one of his relatives struck him and hauled him out of the house.

His manner quite cured me of _that_; he's one of those self-satisfied old men who never look at a female creature as anything but a series of attributes : beauty of youth, candor, eyes like opals and so on. Instead of speaking_ to_ one, he simply pours out a stream of meaningless insincere compliments in a tone meant to convey that he _cannot possibly _take such a collection of hovering jewels seriously and never could, and why on earth would he want to, when the charming creature before him is so charming and insubstantial a poetic fiction? "Ah, Miss Blake," he began, with a twisted little smile, and I could see at once where he was headed—straight toward the clouds. I hadn't anyone more interesting to talk to, so I persisted. "I've heard a good deal of your travels, Mr. Priest," I said, as sweetly as ever a Blake simpered. "I should think Priest Pond would be a dreadfully boring place after Egypt and Italy and Spain."

"On the contrary," he said, with that half-dazed, half-sarcastic look he seems to bestow on everything and everyone. "The charms of ancient empires, as all mournful and hopeful beauty, are meaningful only as a background for the fount of beauty that is starry, unstained girlhood. I should be amiss if I preferred the winters of Rome and Egypt to the springs of Canada."

And he smiled a smile that seemed to recede even as it curled, like a little burning piece of paper, and stared past me with his smug, cold cat's eyes. I could see there was no point in trying to engage him in a _real_ conversation; I simply rolled my eyes and headed for the spread. Oh, he _thinks _he's being "poetic" and "idealistic," I suspect, drifting off on the clouds like than whenever he catches a breath of girlflesh, and scattering purple prose everywhere instead of speaking like an ordinary mortal, but _I _think it's the worst sort of cynicism. He wouldn't speak in such an idiotic manner to Tom or Cousin Ben or Eamon, I'm _sure.__  
_

So the great Infidel of Priest Pond was a grave disappointment, and no progress was made toward knowledge of good and evil at the wedding party of Mr. and Mrs. Eamon Priest of Priest Pond. So much the better for your faithful sparkling fountain of dewy-freshness, I suppose!

But I wrote up "sketches" of all the principal Priests in my Poor Almira's house later, and his was _quite_ the most satisfying!


	36. August 4, 1903: An Inconvenient Flash

**Tuesday, August 4**

_Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud_  
_His secret thought unto the listening crowd_?

A dull day after a string of bright ones, and the bugs out in swarms around the brook, and a storm within. Aye, with lightning and everything! All my little trees are black and scraggled as May Hilson's locks.

Perhaps there's been a hint or two in my Diary of the kind of thing I mean, though no more than a hint. I couldn't _write _more than a hint. That _isn't _hyperbole, matrons, however much you want to _believe _it is.

So there's no real point in saying anything.

. . .

I've made an honest pact with Mr. Towers. I send him three columns every Thursday, and he prints them on Monday. The _Times _illustrator, a repulsive red-faced old man with a moustache the color of soiled snow, who makes a silent belly-laugh and squints his eyes whenever he sees me, has made a slender, pointy-faced, altogether too-charming drawing to represent "Cynthia." I haven't told anyone yet, though I _think_ a few people know. Kate might be sharp enough to recognize my manner, and so would Irene—if she reads such trash as the Women's Page of the Shrewsbury _Times_.

Well, I _will_ say something, for it's the truth, after all.

I've been up to Poor Almira's house a time or two more since the intrusion of an unnamed farmhand on my maidenly solitude. I suppose I should have left well enough alone once I knew said farmhand was in the vicinity, but I couldn't let such a lovely secluded spot go to waste and I thought-

I am about to write that I hoped _exactly the opposite _of what I did hope.

I am going to set down on this patient page the words "I thought perhaps I wouldn't run into M again," and they will be a bare-faced lie.

It's true I _thought those words,_ but beneath them, unadmitted but _felt_, I was _hoping _I would run into M again, and I did. And all the while I was scribbling away and reading _Trilby_ and coming up with nonsense about hats and stockings for the _Times _, my poor stupid heart was beating sadly in unspoken hope, and when he _did _walk past I felt the same terrible electric flash of anguished delight that bolted me to the ground the night of the school play.

So I have seen him again.

I go to Poor Almira's house, always in the morning, and write. It isn't that I _pretend _to—I really am writing, or reading, but always now in anticipation. And he walks by the window at an hour before noon, knocks, and sits down for a moment to talk. Really, that's all it is. You must think me insupportably stupid for imagining otherwise. It's absurdly innocent. . .except for _the flash_.

There, I've gone and named it.

What is it? I suppose (by which I mean _I know_; let's not be disingenuous in our own diary, Diary!) it's simply a desire of the flesh, or "lust of the heart" or "that joy that seems the counterpart of fear," to resort to a lady-poet's lace veil. You see, I am disingenuous even when I mean not to be. If I were not Evelyn Blake of Shrewsbury, but a red-faced shepherdess in a poem or a factory girl in an artist's studio, I could simply say, "I desire" this or that goatherd or curly-bearded opium addict, and kiss whomever it occurred to me to kiss, and that would be that. But such creatures, when they exist at all outside the imagination, come to dismal ends which make up the vast bulk of their dismal lifespans. I have no intention of defecting to Hardscrabble Road, or of linking myself in any way with M. regardless of whether he manages to finish High School and put his farmhand mind to work at a desk instead of a plough; so the question of _what I feel _for him is entirely beside the point.

Yet I go back, and when he doesn't come by I yowl inside like a barn-cat, and when he _does. . ._

Well, I will be disingenuous for a while yet.

And I _know __exactly _what I would say to Mary or Kate or May or Ilse if _she _were idiot enough to court this kind of disaster- for it _is _disaster I'm courting, Diary. I won't pretend there's anything chaste or_ reasonable_ in the flash. I call it that, _as though_ I didn't know what it signifies, because I am a sensible girl well-brought-up and don't dare admit anything but a charming perplexity in the face of such things- but I know well enough it has rougher names. Unkind, true names I would certainly not hesitate to use, if—if-

If what? If it were anything but _mine_.

Yet nothing has happened so far, and I think nothing will. And I _know_ it's foolish to go on thinking nothing will. Yet, I don't see how anything_ can. _I talk of these flashes in a way that must seem terribly _brazen _to anyone reading this—a hideous anomaly in a High School girl-, I know! -and yet any game of Postman's Bell at any fourteen-year-old's taffy-party would look a good deal more like impending ruin to any disinterested observer unacquainted with country-schoolgirl customs.

Though in its defence, Postman's Bell is not played behind closed doors, in an empty house alone on an empty road.

No, don't imagine anything. I've told you- there's nothing to imagine. He sits by me and sometimes I read to him, and after half an hour or an hour he's back down the hill to the Shaw brothers. Once, today, he put his hand on my cheek. That's all! Even Mary would laugh at me for the fuss I've made about it here. It's a good thing, isn't it, that thoughts are private? I'm certain _he _thinks it's nothing—a harmless, bloodless party-game flirtation of the kind all Blake girls are prone to—and it's only _that _which makes it seem. . . safe, I suppose? If _he _felt as I do, or _knew, _I believe I would be in very serious danger indeed.

But what do I know? What do I know about any of it?

All of these things are like shadows under my skin, uncertain evidence of monsters moving in the ocean. Which is to say, I am, for all my ill-advised reading of un-Blakeworthy literature, almost totally ignorant of their meaning. How can it be otherwise? Who would ever have the impertinence to show them to me plain? If I were a Stovepipe Town strumpet or a loose-haired drab of Hardscrabble, I might know already—and no doubt it would be an unkind knowledge, that would make me grim and glib and set me apart forever from all bright babbling High School girls. But I would _know_. This half-knowledge, this unspoken underwater law; I don't trust it. I want to know _something._ Oh, I don't know what I'm saying!

There really is something terribly wrong with me—some corruption at my heart I can't drive out with will or reason. I want the most dreadful things—things I can't even name to joke about, that I wouldn't dare to set down here for fear of making them _real _at last, and I don't know how or why. No one else is like this inside. When I tried to speak to the heretic Priest cousin at Sarah Geordie's wedding, I think some part of me was searching for a kindred—for someone who _had _seen the Black Mass and carried the red flame of it in his eerie cat's eyes and twisted smile—for someone as rotten and black-hearted and _obscene_ as I am _really_.

And then I think, "Ev, what on earth are you on about? You only spoke to Mr. Priest in the first place because you wanted to make fun of him."

And _that's _true, too.

Sometimes I think Tom was right, and I should never have read Baudelaire, or W. Whitman, or anything to inflame my mind with shadowy blood-filled things not fit for good Canadian girls. But would it have mattered? If I'd read nothing at all but Elsie Dinsmore and _Pansy _books from birth, would I have been spared the _flash_? I don't know, I don't know!

And I don't believe it's done me a bit of good to write it out. I feel more ragged and discontented, and bewildered than ever, without even the saving grace of a genuine remorse.

. . .

"Evie," says Jen this evening, in her buttery good-natured voice. "Won't you get out more? I mean to parties and things, not just wandering about. I hate to see you by yourself in such good weather."

Hazel Ellis, a winsome Prep—now a Junior—with permanent flush and improbable curls, is hosting a dinner dance back in Shrews., which Jen now _insists _on my attending as she _insists _I carry an umbrella. She is as anxious as any of the august Blakes at my failure to acquire any new "young gentlemen friends" since Greg M. died, I think. And why shouldn't she be? A few pennies from Mr. Towers and the _Mercenary _aren't going to pay my way through life—and high school won't last forever—and what good is a B.A. if it's only there to stave off the inevitable? No, I really _should _have a beau. At least then I would have cause and sanction to be. . .giddy. But the cubs around here are all either hopeless, or cousins, or people I've known all my life. And I haven't any patience with kissing games. I want to be _serious._

I don't know what I want.

Jen is going to put my hair up in her seed-pearl fascinator for the dance. Poor thing! She was born and grew up and made her way into the world with a perfectly reasonable name—Jen Macready—and now she's stuck with that silly metronome. Imagine being Jen John for the rest of your life, simply because you _happened _to marry!

Really, there's no justice in the world at all.


	37. August 8, 1903: A Dinner Dance

**Saturday, August 8, 1903**

Miss Ellis' little dinner-dance was all well and good; I looked well at least, and that is half of enjoyment. Poor Mary, a martyr to eyebrows, is housebound till further notice, and without her May and Kate were distinctly dull company, trading insincere compliments the whole night, and whispering about Hazel's "overdone" looks. Really, they are jealous. _I'm_ jealous, too, but I have the sense to admit it.

I don't think it's jealousy alone that made me notice how poorly she was dressed, however. "Cynthia" will undoubtedly have something to say by-and-by about the inadvisability of matching a pink waist to a green ruffled skirt and black cashmere stockings—the sort of combination that makes innocent bystanders wish for color-blindness. But then, I'm only sorry it didn't matter for _her _as it would have for _me _– for she _is _lovely enough that it looks all right, really. Fashion is for plain girls, _really_; the pretty ones are nearly all ill-served by it and might as well go around in a sack and pigtails—indeed, when one is _really_ lovely, carelessly and inevitably so as Hazel is, the sack and pigtails only make them shine the brighter by comparison. But for the rest of us, the mere mortals with freckles and thick ankles, nice clothes are a more malleable kind of beauty, one we can put on and change, and alter with the season, and make our own. And in a way it _is _ours the way Hazel's beauty _isn't _hers; we've _made _ourselves smart, while Hazel was merely _born_ beautiful.

It irks me so to see girls who _could _be reasonably smart with a little attention to detail making such obvious and bone-headed errors. May was a case in point; she'd done her hair in such a childish way, and paired it with such finicky lace cuffs, that I wanted to yank her aside and fix her right there in Miss Ellis' parlor. And Ilse Burnley is a whole monthly series to herself—perhaps to be called "Gilding Chokes the Lily" – on the necessity of restraint in dress for fleshy flashing-eyed blondes and other naturally conspicuous persons.

A minor selection of red-headed Murrays was there, and coltish Murray crony Paul Laird, who is editor of the _Quill _in the fall and who seems likely to let me have my own way in everything Skull-and-Owl related. He shoved me in a corner and jawed about Victor Hugo and the like, having heard from Matt who heard from Greg that I was "a regular connoisseur of French poets," which is what passes among his sort for asking me to dance, I suppose. He cracked his knuckles abominably and had a nose like a strawberry and I don't care a fig for Hugo in verse or prose. But he thinks my poetry is "splendid" and "really, even remarkable," and did I ever think about _publishing _any of it, in a _real _magazine, he means, like say the _Ladies' Watchword _of Summerside, or, ah, _Harper's _or something.

I replied that I had thought of it, but not thought it wise to do much about it at this stage—which was an abominable lie, Diary, but appropriate to the situation. This threw him into amusing fits of encouragement, during which he opened and closed his hands on thin air, and poured more lemonade into a glass already full, and brushed the hair back from his narrow forehead again and again and again. May and Kate insist this means I have "an admirer;" I suspect he's just the nervous kind, and would act the same way if you asked him the time, or posed him a question on the Confederation.

Then he started in on the _Owl _candidates for fall, and that got a bit dreadful. He began, of course, by asking whether I was aware of _Emily, _you know, that sweet little Prep, _Emily, _with sort of a lot of shiny black hair and _tremennnnjous_ eyes? I acknowledged I had seen her here and there in a corridor. "Well, you should really ought to get to know her, I think; she's a great girl—bit odd, but then, _you're _a bit odd, I mean, not in a _bad_ way, I mean in a sort of _intellectual _way, but not an old-maidish way, I mean, she's _stylish _in a way, like _you _in a _way, _and I think you'd be great friends, because you're so much _alike_, you know, she's a poet, too. . ." and so on _ad nauseum._

I couldn't get a word in edgewise to say the experiment had already failed, and by the time he'd finished his spiel on what a sweet pair we'd make and of-course-ideal-for-the-S.O. and the "really darling" poetry he was sure we would inevitably write _together_ (poetry being a kind of club scrapbook passed around between schoolgirls in the wee hours, I suppose) _Dear _May naturally thought it quite hilarious, and repeated, "Haven't you met Emily Starr? I'm sure you'd be the best of friends! Evelyn, why don't you invite dear Emily to tea at the manse! Evelyn, you won't throw me over for your new best friend Emily, will you? I mean, you _are _so _very _much alike," all night and for some time after. Kate is merely put out because Paul didn't gabble at _her _all evening.

Received letter from Father today, full of lofty concern for my health and good wishes for the salutary influence of the John connection, and continued hope that I should get my hundred dollars from Aunt Dan and undertake to outfit myself as befits a Blake. I suppose I'll have to before school sets in again. I wonder if I can appeal to her to let me take some of it- even a little- for myself. One four-dollar bill would ease my mind immensely. _ Why _is summer so short? There was some business about the Chinless Child Bride and "our solitude" and "the mother of whom circumstances have so long deprived you" but I only skimmed it before I lay the paper face-down flat on the shelf and put a book on it. Now it just sits there, out of sight but present, like a spider that's crawled behind a cabinet. I haven't decided whether to reply or not.

Life is a whirlwind of gaiety and good cheer, after all. Perhaps it just slipped my mind.


	38. August 22, 1903: A Brilliant Plan

**Saturday, August 22**

Magpie House, D.P.

Well, it's settled, so I can write of it now- however much I may want to keep it secret for superstitious reasons. I won't be going home next week, but am going to take a room at the "Laurent girls'" old house and pay my way! There! You're the first to know of my brilliant plan. I am going to simply stop with Miss Zenobia and Miss Abigail Laurent as long as I have the room and board fees, without going back to Mrs. Halloran and the Blake circle at all. Don't tell! The girls- who are really somewhere around seventy- don't know it wasn't Father's idea, and my cousins don't even know I'm not coming back to Mrs. Halloran. I'm riding back to town with Mary on Saturday, and I shall go straight from Mrs. Adamson's up the hill to the Castle of the Old Maids. It's a splendid spot for me, just alongside the old cemetery, where the poplars have nearly taken over. I can make up a living shaming _Weekly Times _readers into spending more on shoes and hair tonic, and do the dishes for my board. Yes, _dishes_, ye scoffers! I shall do them with a glad heart, because—because I want to be free!

(A funny sort of freedom, you mutter- oh, wisely enough, I'm sure! Freedom to be a slave! Poor headstrong New Women, muck of the world, dangerous risk of enervation, etc. and so on. . .I suppose in a way I _am _throwing away a good deal that anyone else would be glad to have. I suppose that doesn't matter to me nearly as much as it _should_).

(Yet _isn't _it freedom, to choose the circumstances and the nature of one's drudgery? I want to be on my own. I don't care about parties and I don't want the likes of Paul Laird for a beau, and I haven't any native usefulness like Irene or Liv., and it hasn't done me any _good_ for things to be easy—to be sent hats and notes by post and condescendingly smiled on by Blakes and High School professors. I mean in the way I want to be done good, in _really _writing. This _will _do me good. I've told Mr. Towers I'm able to proofread for the paper every Saturday, and he's going to give me a special piece on local retailers for the illustrated edition, and I _think_ he's begun to consider me something worth cultivating.

It's not a "real literary periodical" such as I once aspired to. And it isn't the kind of "writing" I imagine doing, when I imagine the sort of person I ought to be and am, perhaps, alone and in secret. But it is _something._ And I _can_ still aspire.

Maybe I want to live out _because _I need to be alone and in secret. With my family I always feel as if I were bound by what I was two or five or ten or fifteen years ago—there's always a comic story about some jam or a ten-year-old's doggerel whispering in their ears whenever I speak—and with May and the others there's the expectation that I _be myself_—that is, cool, sarcastic, witty, heartless and clever—and if I'm _not, _I must be tucked and buttoned and straightened until I'm _right _again. That isn't anyone's fault, I think. It's just the way things are).

I've had to stop sending "items" to the _Mercenary_. Hattie Denoon's grandmother was _convinced _that the piece on "H.D., Blossom Queen of PEI" who is ill-advisedly "blowing her sweet pollen perhaps too prodigiously over those ruby furloughs" was about _her _granddaughter, and instead of saying nothing and dispelling any rumors that might come her way, she made a horrible stink about it with all the Methodist Mission Guild and actually _created _a rumour where there was none. By the next week word of it reached Principal Hardy somehow, and got into the Methodist sermon somehow- and all without anyone having admitted to reading the _Mercenary_ in the first place! What's worse, I think May might have _told _Hattie that I was writing items, and either she thinks I _do _know something In this case, I think she honestly didn't mean anything- May, I mean; I suspect she was just indulging in a boast about her "accomplished" friend, Evelyn- but of course Hattie took that information fully to heart, and now believes that I am out to destroy her reputation, though why I should bear any grudge against so stupid a creature is quite beyond _my_ paltry understanding. Hattie already has it in for me for reasons unbecoming; she thinks I "cut her out" from Frank McKay two years ago, and I suspect she was responsible for having me un-invited from Kit Barrett's snowshoe last winter, not to mention trying to keep me out of the Skull and Owl for reasons occult and unknowable.

But really I don't care half a fig for Hattie Denoon; only she was in such a state about it, May said, she couldn't _even_ hide that she'd been crying herself bleary. Now, May is prone to exaggerations, but I doubt she'd make something like that up. I don't know whether I've unjustly slandered her good name or unwittingly stumbled on something true. Who knows what any of us are _really_? Maybe we're all nursing hideous secrets in our separate skins. Maybe everyone _is _exactly as perverse and wretched as your Ev, only we'll never know it because it would be suicide to admit to one another. Or maybe Hattie Denoon is just a spoiled baby who can't bear her grandmother thinking unkind things about her morals.

The really absurd thing is, I didn't even _think _of Hattie when I wrote it. I was only pulling initials out of thin air.

I've got three more "items" to send in, but I've switched all the names and the towns. After that, I promise to set all my vicious slanders in some far-off town on the South Shore- or else find some better way of making a living.

Yet! I feel a rare and prickly sense of _power_, as if I really had "seen into" poor Hattie's "soul," as Mary would say. That it was accidental and illusory seems quite beside the point. I ought to be ashamed of my carelessness, but the shame is only a thin bit of tissue; underneath it is an inescapable sense that I am _capable of things_. I even feel, as I haven't since I was an ignorant bairn in knee-skirts, that I could write a _real_ love story at last, instead of a silly comic-tragic High School love story. . . but _you _know why, Diary.

I'm still not sure where books and things will come from, but Shrews. High has a library, after all. And I have friends— don't forget that, Diary! And good ones and true, for all their follies and mine.


	39. September 19, 1903: Of Use

Saturday. September 19, 1903

Laurent Boarding House, Cardigan Street

Whirlwind indeed! No sooner did I make up a poor excuse to avoid writing to Father than it came true—some mystic wheel of reward in motion, no doubt.

But I wrote him myself when I learned he was standing for the general election in B.C.. I felt so proud to think of him moving into politics at last—for he's always intended it and put it off for one reason or another—and this election will be really an important one, a chance to do some real work. _I _should like to go into politics some way—no, don't laugh! I'm sure there's a way to manage it (Other than by marrying the Jaunty Bootblack!) Well, it's only a fancy, really. I should like the chance of doing some real good, not just escaping to Boston at the first chance like some (admittedly sensible) people.

Irene is doing something really useful for her country—training to teach the wives of the frontier to cook and boil water and manage a civilization out there on the prairie. She'll spend a year in the Household Science program and then ship out westward to start a school there. And even though I would rather eat my own head than live ten minutes in Saskatchewan, I _envy _her. I never can make up my mind whether I want to be _useful _or not, but there was never any question for Irene. Sometimes I feel as if she's wasting her gifts, and sometimes I wish _my _gifts were fit to bake a loaf of bread in a sod house. I feel as if I would give up being clever if I could only be _sure _of being _necessary_.

Well, Irene is making herself necessary, quietly. Compare to the J.B., who is always _saying _he's going to be a great statesman and put Canada on the map of the world and so on, but I can't see that he ever _does _anything but boast about the future and cut capers. Tom is just as glib in his way—filling his letters with the doings of future Notable Canadians and their evening-social kidodoes. Oh, I understand he has to make friends in order to gain a position when he leaves college—only it seems like such a tortuous way of doing anything! Maybe I _don't_ want to run a Ladies' Auxiliary—maybe I just want to _have some effect _on the world.

(Don't worry; I didn't put any such nonsense in my letter to Father.)

Here, I will describe to you my room in the House of Laurent.

It's about the width and breadth of my bed back home- no, really! Narrow, low-slung bed of an old-fashioned but decidedly _not _charming kind, ticked up with buggy old down and piled with red-and-white quilts of the dismal old PEI pattern, touches a desk which is desk _and _dresser _and _washtable all in one (leaving me a little square of space to write on and necessitating that I move everything else- book, foolscap, washbasin- to the bed or the rug immediately behind it, which has led to at least two major and two minor spills in the past two weeks- there may have been others, but my memory neglects them. I fear I'll have the floor rotted through by the time I move out). In front of the desk is the grimiest, tiniest window in all Creation, looking out- _not_ over the cemetery, mind you, which _might _afford some minimal measure of picturesqueness- but on a tall board fence with advertisements on it, and beyond it, the train station with its compliments of tramps and day-laborers in their reeking clothes. I don't _like _it, exactly, but. . . I like it. It feels like having a little window on a world I know I'll never enter, and have no _wish _to enter, but am better for knowing something about. The tramps chew in wide crooked circles, and spit without looking where they've spit, and the one white-beard who comes every day to the station, walks out around the fence and sits down in the weeds rests his hands between his spread legs like a pair of dead stems. He sits perfectly still for a long time, gets up, moves to another part of the field, and sits down in the same position as before. He's afraid of the younger men—I think. At least he shrugs and slinks off round the fence when they arrive, and doesn't look pleased when one of them comes round the fence to loom and point in the direction of Long Geordie's barn. I don't know a thing about these men but that I ought to steer clear of them, yet here they are, acting out their strange daily drama all but underneath my window. I wonder if I might be able to write a little story of them, or a poem, in time.

The High-School scholars, on the other hand, I have no desire to immortalize, here or elsewhere. Yet I don't suppose I'd pick a railway-tramp dance over one at Miss Hazel Ellis', however dull I may find the latter. No doubt there's a flaw in my reasoning somewhere.

I write "Cynthia" in history class or in French. I'm so far ahead now in the latter that it's good practice not to pay as much attention as the others. If I ever _do _go to Paris, who knows how many questions are going to be lobbed at me out of the blue, while I am thinking of something else entirely? Though I doubt very many of them are going to concern the past perfect conjugation of _tomber_.

What else?

The sisters Laurent are nearly identical, though there are eight years between them.

There are two other boarders- one, an elderly female piano teacher who plays Beethoven in the evenings on a piano of exceeding tinniness, and a mustachioed gentleman of imposing appearance but very poor grooming. The latter works for the bank in some capacity, and watches me eat with more attention than is strictly comfortable. "That's just his way," sayeth the elder Laurent (or is it the younger?) Well, I think his ways could do with some mending, and I shall tell him so, if I need to.

There's no mirror in the room, and the one in the bath is all but useless with pockmarks and warping. To fix my hair I have to go down to the parlor- imagine, Diary! Yet there's a strange sense of freedom even in that. The only other boarder is an elderly piano teacher, and the Laurent sisters certainly aren't such paragons of fashion that I mind them seeing what my hair looks like in the morning. I expected them to be stiff about visitors, but they're quite liberal- girl friends may come to the room (if they can fit, which is unlikely) and gentlemen callers may sit in the parlor. I had Mary stay the night last night just to see if it could be done. It can- with some sacrifice of comfort.

A small success—no, really, a great one, by _my _measure: the Charlottetown paper copied my poem for Greg. I _almost _put an exclamation point there, but it didn't seem right- doesn't- to gloat about a poem I wrote after his death, but I _am _proud. I've had a whole pack of barely-acquaintances congratulating me about it, and Mr. Scofield in the bargain, and all of them quite kind and soft and understanding about it in a way that makes me squirm uncomfortably. Of course E.B.S _would _come by to make some nonsensical remark about rhymes; of course, she wouldn't know an allusion to _Fleurs du Mal _if it _bit _her. Nothing but Tennyson and Mrs. Hemans in the New Moon parlor, I'm _sure_. Oh, and _Pilgrim's Progress _and the _Peep of Day_, I imagine. Poor dear! But I won't let her lack of education spoil _my poem.  
_

Mary isn't confiding in me about the Affair of the False Baptist and I haven't sworn her to any more secrets about M.. It was bad enough seeing him on the stairs and knowing she _knew_, though what she knows isn't much. There's nothing much _to _know. That's the ridiculous thing, isn't it? I suppose if I hadn't been such a prim and sensible model student when I was fourteen, I should regard all this sort of thing as a tale that is told. But I didn't manage a single measly love affair when it would have been reasonable for me to have one, and now I suppose it is only _severer_ puppy love, like getting the chicken pox years after everyone else and having to stay in bed for a month. Always out o' step in the dance; that's yours sincerely. .

Anyway, that pointless little fire is all ashes now. I hate to tell myself _I told you so, _but-

Oh, why should I joke? My heart is broken .There; I'll say it. And it;s all my fault; it will always be my fault, etc. ad infinitum.

As for _how _it happened, it's far too ignoble a tale to tell in any detail; I don't _want _to relive it. Simply: I let things go too far one day, and M. took this as a sign that I _wanted _them to go further. I don't suppose you want details. And when I- well, I understand why he would be confused, or angry or disappointed. I _have _been an appalling flirt. I _didn't _have any business acting shocked and offended. I like to pretend it wasn't flirtation but something _higher_ and more _poetic_ but it isn't; it wasn't, and there's an end to it.

I haven't time to think about it, anyway. Between proofreading for Mr. Travers two hours every day and pushing the occasional gossip at the Gulf _Mercenary _and my "Cynthia," I've gotten by. But I _am _busy! I broke down and let Aunt Dan take me round to see the new serges and such-and-the-other. None are a patch on the hat I boiled. I really was extremely stupid in that instance. Sometimes I look back on something I've done or thought with a feeling of utter bewilderment, as if I had been _possessed._ No, I don't believe that! But I _do _believe . . . I don't know what I believe. Sometimes for all my endless self-explanation I don't know the first thing about what I'm really like—or I _know _but keep it secret—or, worst of all! that I'm really a dull, sneaking, petty sort of person after all. I don't know _what _was going through my head on half the occasions I've misbehaved.

One of the incalculable benefits of being _too busy to breathe _is that I honestly don't notice whether anyone's been gossiping about my departure from the Blake manse this fall.


	40. September 23, 1903: Dearest Despicable

Dearest among an infinity of Fathers,

Dear, albeit despicable F

I suppose you think it _is_ "in my own best interest" to have me pulled _out of school _just when study is beginning to become most imperative, and furthermore, in my senior year which . . . but then, you don't _quite believe _in college for girls, do you? Nearly all my friends are going, but you _can't quite see the point to it_ and it all seems _rather _silly; smacks _rather _too much of suffrage rallies and shrillness and one-man-bands and bachelor-girlhood and no doubt other ever more detestable perversities unimaginable to sheltered Shrewsbury maidens of good family, and I don't have to continue; I _know _what your facial expression is on reading this: amused tolerance and indulgence of folly. For, ah, yes, I made fun of college girls in your presence _in 1901_ and am therefore _necessarily _barred from _ever _changing my mind in the slightest. For I never _do _change my mind, _dear_, only forget that I said something different in the past—isn't that how _everyone's _mind works, yours respectfully excepted?

Am I being unfair? No, I don't believe I _am _being unfair.

Regard my crippling good manners, dearest-of-all: I write and write till my hand is tingling, yet I never manage to get anywhere near a letter I could _send. _

**Wed., Sept. 23 1903**

Q. Street, Shrews.

I've been sent to Uncle Henry's for now— that ineffectual old witch Halloran having made a not-very-tasteful show of washing her hands of me—for of course once _dearest imaginable Father _found out _his precious Evie-jewel _was "living out," there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in B.C., no doubt negatively affecting weather patterns in the Great Northwest and sending an ill wind hurtling over the lines to red-and-gold Abegweit to trouble the cows and the crows and the Blakes. How could Henry allow such negligence toward his niece, etc. and so forth. I don't know exactly what.

I've _not _been allowed to so much as read the telegraph.

Rather, simply, I am to remain in Uncle Henry's spare room until such time as I can be trusted to return to the castle of my father and the reluctant but duty-bound eye of Mrs. Halloran. I do mean _remain. _That is, I haven't been out _even _to go to school, Uncle Henry having _always_, it turns out (_always? _Yes, Ev, since before you were born!) had a low opinion of the suitability of High School to my _particular _temperament, and Aunt Iz, sharing that natural generosity of womankind, adds that it might have been better for my _character _had I joined L. at Queen's and got my teacher's certificate, which only goes to show—that is, along with _every other thing about her_— what a poor teacher she must have been.

I am further instructed to be grateful for the following gifts: that I was "rescued" from my own foolish impetuousness early enough to prevent "damage to my good name" and/or eventual starvation and/or white slavery, that I am being granted by the graces of my family (who after all is behind me in any matter, don't you forget) an iron-clad excuse both for missing school (doctor's note indicating throat infection) and for being at the Laurent house in the first place, should it come up (errand of charity with regard to the elderly pianist, to whom I had been briefly engaged as a companion before my illness made it impractical). And, most importantly, that I have family willing and able to do my thinking for me should I abdicate the task. Well, how on earth _can _I keep from singing! I nearly wrote "with friends like these, who needs Emily Starr?" but the _present _E.B.S. for all her snobbishness and callow pomposity isn't a _tyrant _for all that—for she _has _some small advantage of youth, however much she pretends to be old and wise when anyone calls her out on her nonsense. Maybe Uncle Henry himself was tolerable enough when _he _was sixteen, but there's not a single scrap of that left as far as I can gather.

All of it is really, honestly, _too _stupid to bear much comment. And it _doesn't _make sense (Mr. Henry Blake having very helpfully _bellowed _as much to me at close range upon my arrival in the bosom of my family) to board out when one has a perfectly lovely home in town. "It doesn't make any SENSE, Evelyn! How in _heaven's name_ does that make ANY sense at ALL?"

_Nothing_ I do _makes sense_ anymore; such is the Lament of the Blakes— and here I was going to write you a little smirk about the lost lamb and the sheepfold, and call everyone _dearest darlingest_ and show that smugly pitying posterity what a clever and heartless devil-may-care young thing I was back here in the miserable present, but I'll be honest, Diary, I haven't the stomach for it, not today and not tomorrow; for all I know not _ever_. I just want to lie on Uncle Henry's stiff old spare bed and weep till next summer. I've half a mind to plunk myself down and write an abominable poem in which tears run like a river through the blighted garden of my soul, and the well-meaning words of my friends are knives in the flesh thereof, and bilgey roiling lakes of blood and despair are the bitter wine of my never-being-understood, for all the earthly good it'll do me.


	41. November 8, 1903: Missteps

**Sunday, November 8, 1903**

Q. St., Shrews.

Some things have happened. Here are a few of them.

Father's election was a disappointment, roundly defeated by a machine Conservative no one wants or trusts. I felt duller than ever after the results- I'd been _planning _for elation, in my thoughtless way. Father is keeping in good spirits- rather _too _good, I think. He sent me an Elect Kenneth Blake ribbon with the suggestion that it "might be worth something someday."

There is snow on the ground now. Sam Butterworth from one of the Ponds and Mary and Mary's cousins are planning a sleigh ride, if it holds the week.

I've made a fool of myself in a worse way than usual. May had a hayride and picnic in mid-October, when the weather was just beginning to turn cold. There were kissing games, as one might expect. On this occasion I was teased enough for being a stick in the mud- May being in higher spirits than usual and most of the girls being strangers, however well I might have known them at twelve- that I began to wonder if in fact I _was _making a mountain out of an anthill. _Why _couldn't I join in? All my life I've sat out of such games for the most vague and romantic reasons- _real love i_s no _game_, I think I wrote in my old diary some dozen times, triple-underlined as occasion required. And all at once, there on the hay-wagon with May and the Sitwells and all our merry primary-school chums, I felt how foolish and snobbish I had been, and I felt terribly lonely and _old _for never having traded kisses in this careless, innocent way I spent my life thinking was so uncouth and unromantic and beneath me.

And hadn't I done the same things, just as brazenly, but in secret?

What _difference_ did it make?

I felt a terrible overwhelming wish to be _one of them_, to flirt and fool about and make fun of love, like a _real _young girl.

So the next chance I got, I determined I would join in. Of course I was laughed at even more for this about-face, and ought to have walked away. But I felt reckless and perverse, and peevish and achy, and I grabbed the bottle out of turn and spun it with so much force Frank Sitwell had to grab it to keep it from going off the table. I thought, "Why shouldn't I flirt and have fun like other girls?"

But I mis-calculated, or else there is something in my nature that repels moderation. "Poetic Ev," Tom would say, smirking his sympathy. Anita Bell told Kate later that my kiss was "scandalous," though I _still _don't know how I was worse than May or Kate or Anita in any _objective _way. I _know _their kisses have been far more energetic- more suggestive- more _total _than mine. Yet the girls all gasped and Frank called me a "hot little nymph" and laughed in a way that made me feel bare and _foolish _and _unclean_, as though I had, thorough some misunderstanding, come to the party in my petticoats and bare legs, and was just then realizing I had done it.

The awful thing of it, though, is that they're _right. _However well I may act in the future, I _am _bad, worse than they can imagine. So I must be a prude and a spoilsport in company; I can't have innocent fun with my innocent friends because I am _not _innocent and don't _wish _to be. I don't! I may _pretend _to be for the sake of self-preservation- I don't know how I could do otherwise- but my _heart _wants to know everything- demon-dances and Alexandrian outrages and all- and so I _can't _play Bottle, Bottle or Postman's Bell as it's meant to be played- that is, by decent young girls and boys in a spirit of cheerful frivolity. There is far too much rottenness in me for that. They _all _saw it when I kissed Frank- I saw that hideous flash of knowledge leap to their faces in an instant, felt the falseness of their laughter when the terrible moment passed.

Am I making too much of this? No one has mentioned it since, beyond some teasing from the boys and some motherly worrying from May- but I _saw _it. Mary, who wasn't there, is trying to get the real story from me- she's sure it's nothing like May and Anita say- but I don't know how to tell her without telling everything. And to tell everything is impossible.

That much is my fault entirely.

On certain other matters, however, I am guiltless. For example: I _didn't _black-bean Emily Starr!

Someone in the S&O _did_, and it's a regular scandal in the school- E.B.S. being the alleged darling of Vice-Principal Alymer and "one of the best upcoming Juniors," et. cetera, primitive attitude toward the necessity of rhyme notwithstanding. Ilse Burnley has refused her election in protest, predictably enough. Laird is _utterly bewildered _and Scoville _enraged_, and a rumor abounds that _I _cast the fateful bean.

Well, if I _had, _I wouldn't be stupid enough to record it for posterity, would I? I _didn't _though, "honest-engine," as May and I used to say. I'm under suspicion because I made no secret that her essay about the Scotch woman, which old Hardy made such an absurd fuss about, was nothing more than an inane, derivative _dialect story _of the kind the _Farm Wives' Companion _pays two dollars for and illustrates with pouting caricatures. And she puts on such airs of being a "pure artist!" But I wouldn't have said _anything _if I didn't believe she had _some _talent she might do better than to waste on such trash. Of course I should have known better than to say _anything. _E.B.S. is the favorite of half the teachers, and I wouldn't put it past Dr. Hardy to find dialect stories high comedy, upstart that he is. But to think I would black-bean one of the only decent writers in the school on those grounds! The only thing worse would be to have Father find out and make one of his scenes about it- I _hope _it blows over without Uncle Henry catching on.

Honestly, I suspect one of the jilted Skulls was the culprit. The dear child _does _have a knack for jilting. Or it _could _be one of the Owls, out of pure envy and spite. I wouldn't put _anything _past a Denoon, if I had to guess. But really, I have no idea.

Yesterday night Tom came in for a visit- to make up for not coming home for his birthday or for weeks after- college being "_acres _of work," in his affected Dalhousie argot, and he spent the evening at Aunt and Uncle Henry's, where I am still cloistered, to see Lil and I; Liv of course is far away and has written only loose, brief letters since the start of the school year. Tom brought along his gay and galumptuous college friend Cal to fill the room with chattering college jokes (some consisting only of the names of mutual acquaintances), leaving Lil and I to feel stuffy and out-of-place, as though he hadn't really wanted to see us except to prove what a splendid time he was having _without_ us.

Cynical Ev!

Yet we sang his "best and newest" songs till far too late, as though nothing had changed, and the happy vigor in our voices sounded not at all forced, and in fact was real, even as we were being pushed out and belittled by Tom's small smiles and his friend's great wheezing gusts of laughter. And it _was _a good night, in some ways. I was glad enough to see him that I didn't _mind _how distant he was. Lil thinks otherwise. She thinks Tom has become "unbearable." But Lil never _does _manage to bear much.

Woke up this morning too early, alone with last night's songs on the piano and last night's wax in the cylinder. Cushions disarranged on the sofa for which I will be held responsible. Desolation and abdominal cramping and a dull sort of throb left over from events and personages Not To Be Named- that's been my month-and-a-half in a nutshell.

It's customary to apologize for gaps in the record, but I don't at all feel like apologizing; I haven't been in any mood to write, or to do much of anything but go around in a haze. It doesn't help that I never get a moment to myself. There's simply nothing to say, nothing _honest_. Before I wrote this, I very nearly dramatized myself by following the word _October _with a series of blank pages, but stopped myself in time and struck them out. Very childish! But you see, there is some part of me that still wants you to know that I _thought _of it- that wants you to _see _the dreary, fog-covered, blankness of these distantly lovely autumn days I've wasted utterly in school essays and lurid French poetry and laying about. So the fact that I _know better _does me hardly any good at all.

Poor you, to have to listen to all of this foolishness! If you could crack your own spine in rebellion, Diary, at being subjected to such nonsense, I don't doubt that you would. If you could, you would curl up, fling yourself into fire and water, knock over my ink to black out all my black moods and foul joys forever. But you can't, poor thing. You must lie helpless beneath my pen and be my salvation.

(In happier days, Tom and I once spent a long evening determining what to call prose that had achieved full purpleness and _gone beyond it_, e.g., the works of Mark Delage Greaves. We concluded that the scientific term was _ultraviolet_. But I miss the happier days too much even to laugh at myself- or to write any more tonight).


	42. November 9, 1903: A Glorious Evening

**Monday, Nov. 9** – night

Adamson's Boarding House (Mary's room)

Sometime toward dawn, I woke from a strange dream, & pushed myself out of bed into the cold to write it down. There followed half an hour or longer in which I sat hunched over this page, making those blots you see, as the words rose and burst and fell in me. And went back to sleep having written nothing.

I dreamed that patronizing old Priest hunchback came to me at school, with a picnic basket on his arm. He was better-looking in the dream, but uglier, too, with one eye bigger than the other and strange, soft, girlish lips. "I was wrong about you," he said. "Come with me." Then we were on the deck of a ship, sailing to Italy. He smirked and closed his eyes so that they were the same size again, and he told a man in black robes, "This is the only woman I know who is fit to witness the Black Mass."

Of course he _also _wanted to kiss me. Men nearly always do in dreams, and girls too, at a pinch. I let him because I knew it was a dream and nothing that happened in it could hurt me. It was a strange feeling, powerful and reckless. I should like to have it again. But the dream as a whole left me restless and unhappy. The words "fit to witness the Black Mass" kept running around in my head. In the dream, I think, I had felt proud, as if I were being accorded a rare privilege. But in daylight, of course, it sounds quite different.

I wasted an hour after school at the S&O meeting, listening to Hattie and Caleb and Paul Laird squabble about the design of next month's _Quill _and the yearly anthology, simply because I didn't want to go home to Aunt and Uncle Henry and dull, pouting, anxious Lila and the wretched little room that isn't mine. And when the meeting was over, having said _not one word_ and heard almost as little, I took up my books and dawdled up to the cemetery hill before heading slowly back to Queen Street with a black hatred in my heart of all mankind. I couldn't get the dream out of my head. There was a weird vividness and a fluttering in it. But it began to be dark, and there was nowhere to go- nowhere I wanted. So I simply went home.

There was a letter waiting for me on the kitchen table and- this is the real point of the story, Diary. Do you need to take a deep breath? I do.

_Harper's _is going to publish my story, "A Country Schoolma'am."

Yes, _that _Harper's!

And they are paying- have already paid- enclosed a marble and golden Yankee cheque for _fifty American dollars._

! ! ! ! ! ? !

I'm as surprised as you are, Diary!

I would like to say that at that instant, the cloud lifted and my heart sang a joyful song of youth, etc.. But really my first reaction was one of suspicion. _Someone is playing a trick on me_. I didn't even remember _sending _it to _Harper's_- I'd done a round of submissions to unlikely places it in a foul mood in late September out of some vague but persistent determination to prove myself unworthy of my ambition, I think. Did I do it _knowing in my heart _ that it would backfire? My heart _sank _at first; I closed up the letter quickly and ran with it up to the bedroom, and shut the window tight before reading it, _in case it should blow away._

_Dear Miss Blake:_

_We are pleased to accept your story "A Country Schoolma'am" for publication in our January 1904 issue of _Harper's Magazine.

That's as far as I got before I had to put it down, face down on the floor, and run outside without jacket, shawl or hat. Then I ran back upstairs to read the rest. Then I put letter and cheque in my purse and ran outside again. Snow was falling in faint flakes in the fading light. All the houses and carts and horses and people and posts on Queen Street called to me with their knotholes, their shadows on the snow, their foolish or lovely fashions, the way their hair escaped to move in the sharp wind. What difference does it make how impossible it is to explain how alive we all are? It's quite enough for the moment to have a letter from _Harper's! __  
_

Then I had to go back inside to check again if it was real, and Aunt Iz said, "Are you going out or staying in?" I just laughed at her and grabbed my rabbit muff from the sofa.

I ran back upstairs and Lila shouted, "Evelyn, what are you _doing_?" and the letter was real, and I put on my hat and cloak and scarf and muff and ran out into the street with snow flying. Well! I nearly fell once on the ice and _did _fall flat in the snow in front of Mrs. Adamson's and bruise my elbow something awful, but no matter! I'll touch the bruise in class and remind myself that it is _still real_, and anyone who laughed at me was welcome to it. I was quite happy to give them something to laugh about on this splendid, chilly, _living _night. What do I care now for Isabella or Lila Blake, or for dialect stories or Jim Blow-Hardy or what Frank Sitwell and his foolish friends think of _anything?_

. . . Only I wish I knew what Dream-Priest meant by "fit to witness the Black Mass!"


	43. November 14, 1903: Sleigh Ride Cancelled

**Saturday, Nov. 14, 1903**

Up all night feeling lonely and fathomless. There's a fine grown-up twinge between nose and forehead, now, growing steadily sharper with the light o' morn. Ilse's left Mrs. Adamson's and rooming a little way up the hill. She still believes I black-beaned her friend, and snubs most of the S&O in retaliation. Certain of the others have taken to making unkind remarks and leaving me out of things. Sweet, stupid Paul Laird can't _imagine _that it could have been me, but Paul Laird never did have much of an imagination. In any event, The Affair of the Black-Bean has quite eclipsed the matter of Frank Sitwell and May's behaviour at the Methodist pie social and any number of whispers regarding Ilse Burnley, S.H.. I've half a mind to write it up for the _Mercenary _myself and get a few pennies for my troubles.

Snow melted by last Thurs.; sleigh ride relocated indoors, which turned out rather less jolly than suffocating, for the most part. May and Kate at each other's throats over something; Ilse refusing to speak to _anyone _with any civility due to the incident of the S&Os, but showing up anyway to glare and flash and pick the twigs from innocent trees, a greater than usual concentration of Butterworths and Carswells, and no one to talk to. Mary did nothing all night but putter and fret and shove baskets of fresh plum puffs at me to be distributed; she's infuriating when she turns domestic. She hasn't the least aptitude for it and it's positively grotesque, in the manner of one of our Jaunty Bootblacks of Stovepipe or Hardscrabble extraction essaying a fine old Dominion Day speech. Really, it was a dreadful ordeal- for the first three or four hours. The odd thing was that we didn't simply go home. No, we stayed, hovering near Elvira Butterworth's end-tables, memorizing book spines, hanging around the edges of each others' conversations, for _hours_ as though some magic might happen.

And after a dreadfully long time- sometime past the magic hour of eleven o' clock, I think – Mary having begun to pluck a thin tune on the old upright (the Butterworths not being flighty enough to have thrown away good money on a Victrola) and Sam sat down on the bench beside her and began a rumbling harmony, and Kate, whose voice is as sweet as her temper is foul, stopped dead in the middle of a false compliment and began to sing.

_By the brook down in the meadow, by the gentle weeping willow_. . . . .

And Ilse, who _can't _sing but whose voice and bearing are so rich and bright that it doesn't matter, joined in with a kind of luminous smirk on her face, as if to say, "Yes, my darlings, the piano is out of tune and so am I, but what does that matter? The moment is its own music!" Then it seemed as though we had only been fooling ourselves all that time into thinking we were uncomfortable and bored and unhappy with one another, and it was clear that we had really been having a splendid time, and were and would always be the best of friends. Sam played two more songs, and Ilse all but shoved him off the bench and began to improvise, with predictable cacophonies, and Ilse and May and I made up some wholly unedifying additional verses to "The Bird in a Golden Cage," at least one of which caused poor Mary to put her apron up over her face and turn bright red.

And for an hour, as happens late at night, it didn't matter that Ilse and Ray and Frank Sitwell think that Evelyn Blake black-beaned Emily Starr, or that Evelyn _knew _that Ilse had been out prowling with a certain Bootblack till nearly dawn the night before, or that Kate and May were _both _"not speaking to" Ilse on some obscure point of honour regarding Caleb Carswell or that Mary was terrified to _speak_ to Ilse at all for fear she might start ranting about _me _again in her incomprehensible medical-dictionary argot. All of that seemed an illusion, fragile as soap-bubbles in the dry heat of a kitchen stove, and the songs and delicious, mysterious feeling of happiness to be somehow _the truth, _a real life revealed to us at last.

Which is the only real reason, I submit, for anyone to be such a fool as to stay up past eleven PM with a lot of silly girls and boys. And in the morning. . . but _you_ know what melts away and what endures as well as I do, Diary. Still, it's a pity you're not human- you'll never know what enchantments these "frivolous" evenings of ours can cast.

Mr. Towers sent a card c/o Aunt and Uncle Henry to inquire whether I was going to send any more columns from _Cynthia_. When she saw it, Aunt Iz sniffed: "Don't they know we_ have _a subscription?" I told her with excruciating politeness that it was, in fact, a request for me to become a _Times _correspondent. I really _shouldn't _enjoy being excruciatingly polite as much as I do, Diary. Her little mouth shrank and she snapped the card out of my hands. "Poor child," she said coldly. "I'm glad you're too sensible to be fooled by such nonsense."

I could have spit in her eye and smashed her pince-nez under my boot, but I simply lowered my eyelids and smiled _pityingly_. "Mr. Towers has not asked anything of _you," _I said. "I don't think it's any of your concern."

She laughed her hard flat laugh and pushed the card down face-first on the table, twisting a little as she did, so that it was wrinkled slightly. I picked it up and read it over again. I'm welcome to send a new column any time in the next week, and should rest assured that there are no bars to my return. Dear old Mr. Towers! Where on earth did he learn such generosity in Greater Shrewsbury? Not from his old friend Kenneth Blake, I'll warrant. He has no doubt, he notes, that I will send him a fresh and amusing column in time for the Women's Page deadline.

But I don't know that I will. Yes, I know. It would be unforgivably childish indeed to have one story in _Harper's _and decide I was too good to write fashion for the Shrewsbury _Times. _And it would be worse than beastly to behave ungratefully toward Mr. Towers when he seems determined to give me a second chance at everything. And I _liked _writing _Cynthia_. It was the sort of frothy unkind wit that comes most easily to me, especially during History lectures. It's simple and _safe _and satisfying- all the things I purport to want out of life, when speaking aloud- which is to say, when I am not being wholly honest with myself and others. There is no _real _reason for me to give it up again, now that I know I can come back to it.

Still, it isn't the _best _of me. And Uncle Henry et al. would drag me home by the hair even if I were to make a hundred dollars a month by writing. And if I _am _to be a sort of decorative parasite, it seems I ought to make something of that privilege, and try what I can do in the way of Literature. No, I'm not going to comment on how childish I sound, nor yet on how dull and repetitive I've become; _that's _how serious I am. For the moment.

So the card from J. Towers, Ed., sits unanswered on my desk, for now, and I must study- for real and by myself this time! There's a McCullough's Latin on my desk and a new bottle of ink and four new pens, which I present to you as rather heavy-handed symbols of my new-found seriousness. I have bought me one sage-green fascinator, a pearl-button collar, and an album for Mary out of my _Harper's _cheque, and put the rest away for. . . what? Oh, some foolish future or another.


	44. December 6, 1903: A Brief Excursion

**A/N:**I was forced to remove the Charlottetown suffragists from the story when I discovered that there is very little evidence of any women's suffrage agitation on PEI during this time period. Next time I will do my research before posting! Sorry, everyone.

**Sunday, December 6, 1903**

It's absurd to lie to _oneself, _isn't it?

Here I'd gone around for weeks expecting Father to invite me to Vancouver for Christmas, and of course he isn't about to do any such thing. Well, why on earth _would_ he? The Chinless C.B.'s people are locally prominent and, one can only assume, would prefer _not_ to be reminded that Kenneth Blake has a daughter nearly the age of their darling. When I suggested as much to Uncle Henry, he bellowed at me to bite my tongue and show respect, etc., which is reason enough to believe my guess is correct.

_Dear_ Father's letter oozes on about "circumstances" and "deepest regrets" as though I were one of his esteemed former business partners; sends pin-money with which to "pick out my own best gifts," which is all for the best; I'm sure I'd just as soon have a new waist and stockings than listen to him rehearse his campaign speeches at me all Christmas _anyway_.

Well, I have my waists- three of them, lush and greeny-pleated and satiny-brown and delectable, in deep, dense colors that make my eyes look bright and clear as stars- and a whole flurry of ribbons for my hair, which is, against all odds, looking almost pretty these days- and silk stockings and what will be, in another day or two, the longest, richest skirt I have ever owned- for Kenneth Blake is nothing if not generous, let it be said, and poor old Isabella Brownell Blake has rather better taste for others than for herself. We were bundled off to Charlottetown to spend Father's money along with poor Lila, who glowered and looked as if she were about to cry the whole time, and May, whom I heckled into coming so I wouldn't be alone, though she hasn't any money of her own and clumsily insulted Aunt Iz when the latter attempted to give her a hair ribbon and a pair of gloves. The poor thing _actually__spoke _the phrase "I don't want your _charity__gloves._" _Dear _May. I am really going to have to have a talk with her- only she never listens!

Charlottetown was bright and cold and full of huddling hurrying people, and when the public lights were switched on over Holman's at dusk, I felt as though I could happily disappear into that luminous evening mist and never so much as _think _of Shrewsbury H.S. for the rest of my mortal life. If only, if only!

Now the snow is falling again.


	45. December 7, 1903: Bad News

**Mon, Dec 7 1903**

A young girl was killed in a suffrage march in Boston. It was in the _Guardian _yesterday, buried between the crime notices and the Louise Lampham Collier _Girl's Own _column. I wouldn't have known about it if Miss Alymer hadn't brought it up, and I thought it rather in poor taste that she did. The Boston suffragists had set up a meeting in the open air, in a park, and the girl was killed by a rock thrown from the crowd. No one knows who- -there were a lot of children and young men throwing things.

The girl who was killed was Miss Rose M. of Braintree, fifteen years old. Fifteen! No doubt the suffragists told her she would lead the vanguard of New Womanhood, and filled her head up with heroic words, like poor Mary and her Baptist, and felt puffed up with pride that "the young people" should be so passionately susceptible to their shoddy ideals.

And now. . .

Even to write the word _dead _feels like stepping into the pitch black of a moonless night. And _that _like the falsest of false similes.

Aunt Iz noticed that I'd changed into my old waist, and pinched her mouth at me when I came to dinner. What does she think of Rose M.? I hadn't the heart or the stomach to ask. But she was in an unusually acid mood and snapped at Uncle Henry over some minor mistake of their French girl's, and needled poor Lila so much over her drawing that she _sat _there, bright red and in tears, biting her lips together and staring down at her roast and cake, which of course put Uncle Henry in a rage at her "impertinence."

If only I had my little boardinghouse room on Cardigan Street! It hardly seems real now. But it _was_. And all my new bolts and bits of serge conspire to remind me that it isn't anymore.

Bright sun dazzling the snow all afternoon, in defiance. It seems hideous that the world should be beautiful, that anything about this clapboard trinket of a town should be beautiful even by accident. But that is only petulance, I know. Somewhere someone is leaning out a window and rejoicing in the snow's senseless purity and the bony fingers of trees, with no reason on earth to care about any of this. "What's a dead stranger and a pack of squabbling relatives in the face of this sliver of eternity?" she says. Laughing, maybe.

She's right, of course, Diary. But that doesn't mean I'm _not_.


	46. December Potpourri

**Thursday, Dec 10, 1903**

Sent my "_Cynthia"_ to Mr. Towers. The _Times _printed it, but left out the two paragraphs on the suffrage march and Rose M.. "Better stick to hatpins, eh," quoth Sir James of the Towers.

I'm to write a few more "puffs" for the shopping rush this week, and to be paid for them. Mr. Towers hands me an envelope full of advertisements and I am to work them into _Cynthia's_ chatter in a "natural" manner. Only I've exams to study for and a composition on the Napoleonic wars, and in consequence, no joy in any of it.

Harbor frozen.

**.**

**Friday, Dec. 11, 1903**

Study. White hissing around my brain from too much of it. Exams begin Monday- so why I am wasting my time scribbling, you ask? You may well ask; I've no satisfactory answer but that my head feels full of bees and I'm out of patience with everything I _ought _to do.

**.**

**Friday evening, Book[e] Shopp[e], 6:20 PM**

_Let them call it just the wind_

_And tell me not to grieve_

_But I know all it left behind_

_And more than they believe_

_._

_I know; about the far-off lands _

_Where people never sleep_

_They hide their faces in their hands_

_And rock, and weep, and weep_

_._

_And I too little all alone _

_To go and find them yet; – _

_But oh! I hear! – When I am grown_

_I never will forget. _

.

I came out to the Shoppe this evening, "to study." Really, I only needed to get out of the house. I brought my Latin book, but I won't use it- there's no room here, and no quiet place. I bought this month's _Harper's _instead, to see what kind of company my "Schoolma'am" will be keeping, and found this poem. Perhaps it is a very puerile and mincing poem- I think in any other mood I would call it so- but it suits me to-night.

It has always seemed to me, ever since I can remember, that I lived very near to a world of horror and pain, of ugly long lives and unfathomable loneliness, and that the highs and lows of my own small life were but a thin curtain shielding me from the vast and black true world beyond.

From time to time it seemed I caught a glimpse- in the ruined face of an old pedlar woman, in a chance remark of coarse boys, in the breath of rumor, in my own dreams. Most recently, in the accidental death of Rose M., fifteen, of Summerside, PEI. Something flutters round the edges, taunts me, whispers, "I am all around you; I am you. I am Reality, unseen, unfelt, but inescapable."

And then I am dizzy and brittle and spiteful for days. From time to time I have tried to "write it out;" this does no good, yet to ignore it is worse, somehow.

Mary is too ill with the "grip" to study, and May and Kate will only tease and distract me and make matters worse, and Ilse will be sharp and sarcastic as long as E.B.S. continues to pervade the atmosphere. My face still stings from the walk up Queen's Street in the cold, but there is nothing else. I will have to go home and hide my _Harper's _until I've learned four hundred years by heart and have an edifying moral ready for every fifty-year period at least. An unsatisfying venture, and a dull diary.

.

**Wednesday, Dec 17, 1903**

_Mon couer, comme un oiseau, voltigeat tout joyeux_

_Et planait librement à l'entour des cordages;_

_Le navire roulait sous un ciel sans nuages_

_Comme un ange enivre d'un soleil radieux_

.

I don't know why, maybe because I've had illness and dark things on my mind, or because of what happened in Charlottetown, or simply because I _ought_to be studying- I took out my little book of French verse for the first time since Greg died. And the poems are smaller, and coarser and further away than they seemed a year ago. But they sing still. Perhaps a great many things are like that; I don't know.

_._

_Des féroces oiseaux perchés sur leur pature_

_Détruisaient avec rage un pendu déjà mûr, _

_Chacun plantant, comme un oitil, son bec impur _

_Dans tous les coins saignants de cette pourriture_

_._

"Evelyn, it pains me to see you fall into this modern fashion of obsession with everything coarse and ugly. In my day, we did not think it the duty of the artist to be gross and cynical."

That is what Vice-Principal Alymer said of my essay, "On the Death of Miss Rose M., New Woman."

Of course, everyone says "in my day" and But _her __day_ was also Charles Baudelaire's- or near enough- and mine is mine as much as it is the _Ladies' __Home __Companion_'s.

If she had said only that it did not meet the requirements of the assignment, which was true, I should consider myself justly rebuked. But that is not her complaint. "You were asked to write of something _uplifting _and _meaningful,_" she wrote, in her hasty, narrow, nervous hand- an old maid's hand, a girl-never-grown, still scribbling in scrapbooks to her "most beloved chums." At the end, upright and underlined: "**I am disappointed in you.**"

Oh, she's right, of course; it's a queer, ugly thing, full of bitterness and unkind descriptions. And were I sweet, fat, frilly Miss Alymer, I should see no virtue in such an endeavor. There _isn't _any virtue in it, except that I _had _to write it. Those dreadful, stupid suffragists, the snow falling on the dirt and rubbish, the office-boys and stablehands- all of these would have kept on crowding their way into my poor brain, past the Tudor Period and the _Idylls __of __the __King, _and I should do even worse on the rest of my exams than I am going to do anyway.

But that isn't it. When they learn that I've done poorly in English, one of my "safe" subjects, Father and Uncle Henry will bellow from their corners of the continent, Aunt Iz will smirk triumphantly, Tom will worry and fret and laugh at me; Mary will scold me by looking down and growing whispery and meek, and Kate will scold me openly and act as though I were a hypocrite for daring to correct _her _grammar, dreadful as it is. The news that "Miss Blake" turned in a very disappointing essay for her final exam has already trickled down to the Junior class via Anita Ball and Hattie Denoon. Yesterday when I stopped Ilse to ask after Mary, that insufferable Emily Starr made a point of lowering her thick lids at me and drawing her mouth out in a simpering long line- though of course, she _always _makes that face whether she has anything to gloat about or not. Well, never mind her. _She _hasn't a story in _Harper's. _I suppose Alymer will think "A Country Schoolma'am" coarse and ugly and _modern _as well.

Yet, if I am to write at all, why should it be to please the Miss Alymers of the world? I don't wish for the world to be ugly. But neither do I think it virtuous to hide behind a curtain and hope for the best. What is the use of writing anything if I don't answer the world honestly?

For I _am _a gay and wind-lofted bird-soul, and the birds _do _peck at corpses when they find them. And my essays are the best in the Senior class whether Miss Alymer thinks them sufficiently pretty or not. I don't need a star pin to know that; anyone with eyes can see it. I don't mind setting it down, for it _is _true.

.

**Thursday, Dec. 18.**

Exams nearly over. I've given up _completely _on Latin and will simply take whatever marks I manage to earn, and the star pin can go hang. Otherwise- and excepting Miss Alymer's perpetual disappointment in the shameful waste of my gifts etc., I've been surprisingly little taxed this year. History was almost _deplorably_ simple in the end, and my French is now decisively better than Mlle. Hasting's. Perhaps I _have _grown cleverer for all that.

May is _determined _to go sledding when it's all over- will plunge straight out the door of the H.S. into the snow, I suppose. Well, we shall go and get frostbitten together. This studying is exhausting. I want to be _out_. Why did I ever imagine I wanted to go to college? I don't want any such thing! I want to be free and cold and breathless, and never otherwise till summer comes.

What does that mean? Nothing whatsoever, Diary-my-love. I simply liked the sound of it.

Silly, frivolous Ev!


	47. January 2, 1904: Holiday Digest

**Saturday, January 2, 1904**

Where did the year go? Too much to report; I'll never catch up, so why try? Do I really imagine anyone will care in a hundred years about the catalog of apple-bobs and taffy-pulls, and who kissed who, and whether I.B. and E.B.S are on the outs? No, good heavens; there's a _world_ out there!

I suppose you'll want to know all about Christmas and New Year's. Nothing to say; Christmas came and went. No Liv, no Father. Tom's friend Cal is back instead, tormenting us with his jokes, pretending to dance with Aunt Iz. He likes to say shocking things at dinner and grin. "I rather _like_ the theory of the transmigration of souls," he said at Christmas dinner. "It charms me to think Our Lord might be living among us as an old wharf dog, or even a seabird." Aunt Iz is _very _sarcastic toward him, and we have all - except Tom - been pleased to enjoy seeing her "wit" turned on someone _else_ for a change.

What else?

It was strange to bid farewell to 1903- it seemed barely begun, and yet such a long time I felt sure I had grown old inside. Greg Mackenzie is dead, and another, entirely more foolish romance- also dead- and all those long nights studying or writing, the flight from Father's house and the few wild weeks alone in the house on Cardigan Street, and every long moment collapsed to a point and flickered like a magic-lantern light, as though it had been only that all along. We played and sang in the parlor, and cast cards for the future, and Cal was almost civil, though still not wanted. Tom read my cards, and smirked the whole time. I won't set down what he said in case it turns out to be true.

Livia sent a cartoon post-card, dented, picturing a farmhouse and a haggard teacher surrounded by starvelings. She's well and truly gone, I suppose. Hints of a romance with a local banker's son; asks after everyone's health as though we were poor third cousins.

Irene was home for a week and that was better; we went to see Mary once we had permission from Dr. Burnley and the three of us sat up chatting as of old. Irene is taller, or seems so, and more assured than ever, her voice smooth and deep, her pince-nez glinting. In the summer she will go off to the West to teach household sciences , somewhere where the wind sings and cries, and no one is beautiful. She has two poems in the _Ladies' Companion_, and a pamphlet forthcoming on clothing preservation. Will she ever get married? (Mary's question, but mine, too). "That's not something I have time to think about at the moment." I gave her two new stories and four poems to read, and she disembowelled them all, very kindly, and told me to write them all again in a month. Sometimes I wish I could be like her, steady and clean and _sensible,_ and sometimes I thank Heaven I never will be.

What else?

Dreamed again of old Jarback Priest, the sentimental cynic from poor Sarah Geordie's wedding. He was sailing to Egypt, but he couldn't leave yet. "We can't set sail until we sacrifice the goat!" he said. And the goat was a little French boy in cardboard antlers- antlers, not horns; _I_don't know why. He sat on a crate and looked forlorn as Jarback fumbled with his black robes. And in the morning there was a letter from Mrs. Eamon Priest herself, full of guarded ashamed boasts about the frilly mid-century luxuries of Eamon's ancestral home. Between them a terrible sadness creeps, like a grey ghost whose prison bars are black rows of writing, penstrokes fine as an eyelash- the only thing poor, dull, cream-faced Sarah learned at that swarming clapboard country school in Derry Pond. And it said in the letter as plain as day that Jarback was over for a visit and made fun of them the whole time in typical Priest fashion. I wonder why I knew to dream of him?

Exams- but they won't matter in five years- or one! let alone a hundred, and if some biographer insists on knowing, he can dig up the school records. I passed; that's sufficient. Marsh O. roundly defeated in Geo and nearly so in French; sheepish and red-faed at May's sled party- a real blow to his hopes, ragged as they always were. _Not _too ashamed to turn up where he isn't wanted, however- but of course, he had been _invited, _for which I gave May a very stern talking-to, which she naturally ignored. Really, she is more impossible now than ever. But w_hy_does she insist upon maintaining ties with the worst dregs of the North Shore, after all I've tried to help her? Not only _both _Ordes but Millie Finch was there, from down-shore- practically a Stovepipe Towner, if not from the district itself- along with a whole gaggle of disreputable gingers from Cavendish who flitted and pouted and giggled themselves into a puddingish heap. It's not as if I've never _told _her how ill it looks for her to gallivant with people of that kind. It's not as if she has a name to fall back on if anything goes awry. The Hilsons have _always _been on very shaky ground within Shrewsbury, and her stepmother and the Pryors are on a lower rung _still_.

I know, I know, these things shouldn't matter. But they _do._The sooner she learns it, the better. If she isn't able to take advice from her friends, she will find herself in a bad way very quickly.

And what else, what else?

Impatient Diary! There's _always _something else. But if I sat here and told you _everything_, when would I find time to live?


	48. Three from January

**Friday, January 8, 1904**

School began again in a sudden rush, with Paul Laird and the _Quill_to attend to, and four poems by Esther Creeley all in a little stack on the desk, and Mr. Scofield in a foul mood about the state of juvenile literature, as per usual. All the roads are frozen solid, and the girls slip and scramble on the ice and clutch each other, and the sky is slate-grey and will be for months yet. Frank Sitwell can talk of nothing but the debate next Friday with Queens, in which he fully expects to carry the honors. I have my doubts.

The Preps are flooding the _Quill _with Prepish poesy this year. I don't know where they get their confidence from; _I_ certainly never said an encouraging word in their direction. Kittens, fairy kisses, frost-etched panes, and beloved firesides abound in astonishingly predictable forms, as well as the usual ration of slightly soured Gothics and laments for lost innocence. Frank has written an essay "On the Lamentable State of Flirtation," and, much as I loathe him in any other capacity, it made me laugh out loud, twice.

I haven't seen my story in _Harper's _yet. I'm afraid to look. What if it's dreadful? I think when I do finally see it, it will feel like a very odd dream.

.

**Wednesday, January 13, 1904**

What do you think happened to-day? Tom sent a letter- a jolly, breezy, pompous Tom-ish letter- and enclosed within was another, smaller envelope- sealed. "Cal wouldn't let me alone until I enclosed the enclosed," he wrote. "I must assure you that it was only to be rid of him I did so, and cannot vouch for the contents, except insofar as they are guaranteed to be pure and utter nonsense. I advise you not to take seriously anything he says, unless, of course, he notes as all sensible men must that Evelyn S. Blake is the best of all possible _cousines_, and further, that I am,

Yours under considerable duress,

Tom."

Well! The letter- which I barely managed to pick out of the gluey envelope without shredding- began with the words "Charming Evelyn!" -yes, exclamation point and all- and was a rather needlessly brittle and poorly-worded declaration of sentiments- the soft and tender variety, mostly, with the usual dash of condescension. Condescension is the price one pays for having a conversation partner who knows anything about literature, it seems to me. There are worse prices, I suppose- but it seems there ought tobe a middle ground _somewhere_.

"In truth," quoth he, "I didn't get up the courage to write you until I saw your charming story in _Harper's_. How on earth did you manage to write such a thing at your age? It's almost _wise_. Well, I won't ponder the mysteries of the universe. Perhaps you wouldn't mind me calling on you sometime? I mean, after the harbor ice breaks. I am informed that degenerate Yankees such as myself are liable to become quite enamored of that lovely Island of yours, and am eager to test my own susceptibility under more favorable weather conditions."

And so on in the same vein- a ridiculous performance! I showed it to Lila, who said, "Isn't he dreadfully _old_, though, Ev?" And indeed, Calvin H.R. Perkins of Maine, U.S.A. is twenty-four- unspeakably ancient for a Dalhousie freshman- having spent his youth on correspondance to far-flung parts of. Yet he is, I think, really and truly smitten with your Ev, skimpy skirts and pompadoured Cadogan and all- for all he _must _condescend out of nature and principle. I haven't decided yet how subtly I mean to mock him in my reply- only there's no one to consult with; Irene will write quite sensibly and primly that I ought not to mock him at _all_, and May will appeal to my worst instincts, then spread it around the school that I have a dozen ancient Yankee beaux on a string, and Kate will simply be envious and snappish, all her advice a disguised demand for reassurance that all the boys secretly like her best and only speak to me at all because they fear to approach her sun-bright beauty. And Mary is entirely too pious as of late to be any use whatever. Tom is the one- Tom and I ought to write a Delange Greaves-esque reply in tandem, and laugh ourselves silly over poor Cal's poor passion for my "sparkling eyes" and "intelligent manner."

"Almost _wise"_- _is _that a compliment? Why on earth couldn't he have said good or bad?

And to-day when I went to drop off my _Cynthias, _Mr. Towers said nearly the same sort of thing- "a grown-up story, almost" - wagging the new _Harper's _at me with a sly crinkly grin, though I hadn't told him anything about the story and it might just as well have been written by another E. Blake. "Not so," he said. "Not in the least. Don't lie to an editor, eh? You've got a _sound_ to you, old girl- a kind of nosy, throaty _sound_. No, it's not terrible; don't look so crestfallen, now- I never said a thing about good or bad. Only don't go thinking you've fooled anyone with those initials, that's all. You couldn't be anonymous if you tried."

And at that he fully _intended _to laugh himself silly- but he barely managed a chortle before he began coughing, for which I did not feel the least bit sorry for him. Mr. Towers is so utterly determined to insult everyone who works for him that I must say I barely even _notice _anymore when he threaps away at me. While he was hacking and wheezing away all over my _Cynthias, _I picked up the story and skimmed it through. Do you know, Diary, it really _is _good- not perfect or very profound, of course, despite Cal Perkin's italics- but there's a scent of humanity about it- I don't know _how_, but it's there. I suppose Aunt Iz will be all bristles if she sees it. Poor old Isabella! I truly am sorry for her and her incongruous name and her dreadful furs and her stones for eyes, for all the trouble she takes to make herself as unsympathetic as possible. Though if she _hadn't_been so unpleasant to Lil I shouldn't have written the story at all. I wonder what she would say to that?

_Really,_Evelyn, you _are.__.__._(small flat smile) _remarkable._

I wonder why Uncle Henry married her. From pity? No; he hasn't any. I think it was simple opportunity. The man simply can't stay unmarried more than a week at a time without breaking out in hives. For that matter, why should _anyone_marry who can afford a housekeeper? It isn't as if his daughters give him any visible joy- and he can't expect to have more with Our Miss Iz, unless he is a deal more innocent of the world than his manner would suggest.

Mary and I went to see the visiting minister of the week at St. John's last Sunday- a deliciously unbuttoned, blustery performance. Utterly unsuited to the Shrews. Presbytery, of course- you could see the aunties clenching fists and teeth as he contended mightily with the lectern and his own overabundance of phleghm. _Too _Scottish, I think, for these faded far-off shores of ours; in the real crags and heaths he might have found a warmer welcome. Mary began to laugh mid-way through his description of the Parable of the Wedding Feast and could not stop for anything, though she tried to disguise it as a fit of the hiccups. She is pale and too thin, but better. I think her bout with the "grip" burned some of the shame of having been fleeced by the false Baptist, and she is more herself again- sending out shivering tentative feelers for something new to love.

.

**Sunday, January 24, 1904**

Q. Street, Shrews.

Ice storm. Am reading little book of stories Irene sent me, _A __Night __in __Acadie, _by a Louisiana writer, Mrs. Chopin. That is her way of twitting me about my unhealthy love of _Evangeline _during primary school, but I was glad to get it. Crippling freeze all week; nearly had to cancel Great Debate, but managed to bring it off, though there may be some frostbitten Queen's boys back in Charlottetown. Rumour claims it was a rousing success of its kind, with Queen's soundly defeated, for whatever that's worth in the grand scheme. Hadn't the least interest in listening to Frank Sitwell contending with the west wind on the matter of Skagway, nor yet to be pursed-mouthed at by E.B.S. and her ilk, so stayed in at Uncle Henry's and consoled myself with reading of lovesick Papists in a warm country.

Well, the debate has been good for one thing: Ilse Burnley is on the outs with E.B.S. due to the bad manners of one J. Bootblack, Esq., whom she spent weeks coaching on the proper pronunciation of English compound words only to have him ignore her in favour of Miss Starr, who had not; though the latter feigned polite shock at this breach of bootblack protocol, Ilse is at present "unable to stomach the puny face of" either of them, and spends much of every evening threatening to turn the former into some sort of entrail-themed public ornament, in addition to using his eyeballs for marbles and yanking out his tongue with a pair of pliers.

In consequence of this she is more snappish and less jolly than usual, but quite a bit more amiable to non-EBS elements. So I am allowed- invited, even- to come by her boardinghouse room with Mary to "help her study," which really means listening to her go on at length about the vices, real and fantastical, of the luckless J.B..

_Dear _Ilse! I really _ought_ to snub her after how abruptly she threw me over after the _last _time she and E.B.S. were at threadbares, but I _ought _to snub about nine-tenths of the H.S. on the same grounds, and in the end I would rather have friends than principles. Ilse is as great a talker as Kate Errol, but there is something immeasurable more _wholesome _about her talk, despite a certain portion of unholy knowledge derived from her negligent father's medical library, which she appreciates primarily as an inexhaustible source of insults. I have learned- or suspect; I wouldn't dare try to get at Dr. Burnley's books to confirm it- that I suffer from at least one dangerous tendency, though I do not have the tell-tale dark circles as of yet. Perhaps I won't get them. I must try to be healthier- better- more calm.

When Ilse is on the outs with Emily, I always imagine we are about to become great friends, but we never do. I only think we _ought _to. She still dresses ridiculously and is impetuous, but I could love her for these things as easily as in spite of them. I _want _to. Perhaps we _would _have been friends, if Emily Starr had gone to Queen's instead of to Shrewsbury High School, or But she is dumb and blind to the world any time her beloved Miss Star enters the room, and the rest of us might as well be dust on her windowsill- not even worth brushing off.

Perhaps I'm unfair. Well, then, I'll be unfair. It's the truth, in any case. I am not even sorry that I used to call her the Scarlet Harlot, though I know full well by now she is not really as ill-bred as she would have us all believe by her dress and her language. She is as pure and clean-minded _really _as I _seem _to be – a bright wild rose, with hyperbolical thorns.


	49. January 30, 1904: Beaux Arts

**Saturday, January 30, 1904**

Ridiculous scene to-day. Marshall Orde, of all people, _called __at __the __front __door_, and Uncle Henry is in a rage about it, and wants to know _what _I have done to encourage that overgrown _farmhand _to come here, and Aunt Iz smiles and says "Really, Evelyn" as though she knows something, though of course she never does. She has only mastered the art of _seeming _as though she does. And I have answered truthfully that I cannot imagine why he would attempt such a thing. Uncle Henry is dissatisfied but finally unable to imagine that there is anything else to it: the poor boy became infatuated with me, as lumpish but ambitious farmhands will with girls of good family, and turned up at my door with a box of cheap candies and a note, not knowing any better. He was sent away with candies and note undelivered, and I will not know what it said. I don't want to know. A simple story, comic, with a touch of pathos for the would-be lover, a good giggle all round the dinner table for the girl of good family.

And for Mr. Orde? A jolly country girl with rosy cheeks and a leggy manner of sitting, I imagine, once he's shaken off this peculiar idea he has of me. I suppose he imagines he might gain some kind of social status from courting me. Poor dear! It's no sense trying to _explain _anything to him; he only laughs it off and shakes his head like a big dog. Evie-you-think-too-much-don't-you. For M. never thinks of anything; he moves through his thicket of improbable daydreams and daily tasks as a cheerful beast, and when an Uncle Henry whips him with a bit of newspaper, he turns aside and goes off just as cheerfully in another direction. So much the better for him.

Luckily for me there was no need to leave the staircase. I simply stood in the background and let Uncle Henry do all the disappointing there was to be done. I don't know if other people can _see _the awful sort of Svengali effect M.'s presence has on me at times, but I shouldn't want to test it out on Uncle Henry. I haven't seen him in school- M., I mean- since the winter exams. Perhaps he failed and decided not to return. That would be too bad, but not surprising. Certainly I don't trouble myself about M. Orde's life choices, if he _will _insist on being absurd. Anyway, I loathe box candies. I suspect no one ever eats them except out of a sense of crushing social obligation. No, that's not true; Mary loves them. She would eat a whole box if given the opportunity. I could have given them to her- but I don't suppose Uncle Henry would have permitted it.

I have had another letter from Cal Perkins, a longer one, and a great deal less silly than the first, though _why_ he imagines I would want to hear _every detail _of the traditional New Year's pranks at Dalhousie is beyond my feeble understanding. I wrote Tom a long, perhaps deceptively jolly letter, and Cal a very short one- but polite. For I am incapable of being other than polite, Diary my love.

Fred Kent has won the yearly prize in drawing. It _ought _to have gone to Edith Andrews, but I suppose Fred's pictures are more likely to win the favour of the R. Academy and heaven forfend Shrewsbury H.S. should be any different. I can't see what everyone is in such a lather about; he's talented, I suppose, in the mechanical sense, but his drawings are like Pear's Soap girls- all glow and no flesh. Well, he's fully as _pretty _as he used to be and twice as arrogant, and that is all one ever need say about Mr. Frederick Kent.

Rumour has it that the J.B. was invited to dine at Hardy's next month, after all but winning the debate. Frank Sitwell in _quite _ill humour over it; Ilse apoplectic as usual. I suppose it's too much to ask that he recite some of his poetry for the honoured guests..

Two rejections to-day. I know I ought to greet them with joy as two more stepping-stones in the icy brook the opposite bank of which is Success, but in truth the phrase, "read your submission with great interest" only makes me want to stab a letter-opener through the nearest pair of eyes.

Ice and rain and wind all week. To-day the furnace was knocked out and Scoville tried to keep us anyway the full length of class, until Miss Alymer came in and forced him to send us home. I predict a general increase in runny noses in the days to come.


	50. February 4, 1904: Cross Fingers

**Thurs. 4th**

w. broken pen in Mary's _freezing _room at Mrs. Adamson's; _why __is __it __so __cold __here? _Locked out of Uncle Henry's after S&O w. no explanation & bookbag only & Marys ink _literally __frozen __in __jar_

will be sent away (Vancouver?) WHY? nothing no word "go to your home" & face _ashen _actually _ashen __ashes_

would not say what r. why Mary can't understand what it could be she

mrs. adamson a p. pinching tyrant ; ought to be beheaded - stove not even lit this aft. & the roads all frozen "go

"to your home," he said, flat and white and cold. I have a new nib from Mary, dearest of all shamefully mistreated boarders. The ink was _frozen_ so we set it on the stove downstairs to thaw it; it snapped the tip of my nib when I tried to ram my pen into a block of ice. Mary has been staring with her usual patient condescention at my attempting to scribble frantically with said broken nib and iced ink, as though I were in prison or a fugitive and couldn't simply ask her for a new one. Mary also asks that I note it is not condescention, only concern.

Dear Mary is very good and dear and no, Diary, it is nothing but goodness she pours out on the world; condescention is only what _I _should feel if I watched one of _my _friends stabbing and smearing in the manner described.

_Damn _Mrs. Anderson and her foolish, heartless, stupid "economies", and it was idiotic of you, too, Mary, not to _say __anything. _It's one think to be meek and quiet of spirit, and another to- all right, then, _bless-her-and-keep-her, _though those preening moral peacocks of the Mission Society _ought _to know she lets innocent girls freeze to death while she pinches pennies for the warm-weather heathen, after Mary nearly died with the 'flu only a month ago. Mary requests I amend "nearly died" to "didn't come close to dying at all," and further that I "exaggerate too much;" also observes that "it's good to do mission work." We've been reading _The __Alhambra _to pass the time while we wait for the room to warm up again. I went to the kitchen and said to Mrs. A. that _I __would __pay __her _for the coal, but we were lighting the upstairs stove and that was _all. _And that most nauseatingly tremulous of petty-tyrants, gave in- even apologized in a flurry of stunted fluttering hands; I am Henry Blake's niece, after all; I am Kenneth Blake's daughter, for a little while longer, at least. _What _is Uncle Henry so furious about- would not even tell me or _look at me _directly.

I fear the worst.

Mary can't understand what could possibly. What is the worst? Thinks perhaps M.O. coming to the door has something. "But that wouldn't make any sense- how could that be _your _fault?" Thinks some unfounded rumour may have been spread by some unscrupulous person, but why? "You've never done anything but be kind and try to help people." Says Mary, who sees only mirrors. We are going to sit up all night and tell ghost stories in the grand old primary school style, so she-

Mrs. Halloran is in the parlor now. I'm wanted. Cross fingers.


	51. February 7, 1904: As Ithers See Us

**Sunday, Feb 7, 1904**

Lila brought my things over this afternoon, dumped them in the parlor, and kicked the wall. "You're so stupid, Evelyn!" she sobbed. "Why don't you ever _think _?" She cried on Mrs. Halloran's sofa until she felt moved to apologize, and ended up crying again. Well, I am sorry for her. But I have my old room back, and my schoolbooks, and this tempest will blow out to sea soon enough, I think.

What was it I was thrown on the streets for, you wonder? Why, it was a brazen and shameless act that must leave me outcast all my days! You see, I . . . _published a story in _Harper's _!_

_Yes, _I suppose _most _families would consider this an _accomplishment_ , perhaps even a notable one- no doubt Emily Starr's people have a bonfire and roast a goose every time she gets one of her charming trinkets in the _Girl's Own _reader-contribution column. But we Blakes are not like the common run of mortals, oh, no! "Family" is all, and to disgrace a member of the family, albeit one by late third-marriage, buy "putting her in a story," _that _is unforgiveable. Never mind that the story in question is a good deal more sympathetic to Miss Amelia Stanton, wholly fictional schoolma'am, than the offended party has_ ever_ managed to be to any single human being in recorded history.

No, I think what she can't stand is that it's _good_. And I am young and she never will be. I would never say such a thing out loud, but _I will _think it, for it's true.

Lila is in a state. Of course Aunt Iz would take it out on _her,_ now that I have been removed. Henry and Isabella fully united at last against any word from me entering the citadel. I've tried telephoning and calling at the door and sending Lila back with a note (returned unopened).

I was so afraid of what it _could _have been that I couldn't think straight. You can't imagine what thoughts went through my head- that someone had told him about M. or Frank Sitwell's innuendoes or even that I had sent false gossip items to the _Mercenary. _For a moment, I thought of _you,_Diary- that someone had found and read you again, and grabbed at the base of my bookbag, feeling for your shape. My mind was racing. I even thought for a moment that someone had _seen_ _my thoughts_; and they _would _have given Uncle Henry the right to throw me in the streets. But no, my thoughts are safe- for good or ill. No one has managed to see in the dark and save me. So in a way I am lucky.

I stayed with Mary till the evening, and Mrs. Adamson made tea for us to make up for her negligence with the stove. Some time later, Mrs. Halloran turned up at the door, absurdly dumpy and dumpling-faced and chagrined in the dear old impossible church bonnet of her mythical prime, asking after me. "Why, yes, she's with Mary," said the old traitor. When I came down, Halloran was perched on the very edge of the rattiest chair in that ratty little parlor, her fat hands folded and resignation quivering in every inch of oily flesh.

"I've spoken to Mr. Blake," she said.

Witness tableau: your Ev, sick-faced, too tall and broad, in thinnest stockings and petticoat beginning to wilt, too evidently desperate to hide panic and guilt behind a facade of ironic distance; little wheezy Mary clinging to her arm like some cave-creature, wide-eyed and wrinkle-browed and pre-emptively offended; prim, shivery Mrs. Adamson drawing her restless mouth down into a bent bow of disapproval, the dismal scent of wet wool rising in the small parlor's heat.

I am only putting off the inevitable, dear Diary. The facts you want are, after all, not the important ones. I choose that they not be. I choose Mrs. Adamson's hideous brown-and-gold wallpaper, rather; choose the small frayed hole at Mary's shoulder and the pang it gave me like a shivering pool at the center of that storm of terrified self-regard, and the peculiarly suety sound of Mrs. Halloran's half-Anglicized vowels as she looked up and away, and glared, and turned away again as the clock chimed, tong, tong, tong- six times for six o'clock, and the winter light dimmed and grew bright again; we only remember what we _choose _to remember, and I do not choose that in twenty years I shall sit by my fireside and read- not of the cold metallic tang of the air that whirled in with Mrs. Halloran's ancient taffetas, nor that Mary's eye-lashes were sticky with sleepy, loyal tears, nor yet of my inappropriate exultation at the words, "your story in that magazine" - but only and tediously of what I will by then already know and have forgotten, or know by its fruits, or have rankled over for decades like a dyspeptic oyster; what does it matter?: that by request of the third Mrs. Henry Blake, I have been sent "home" to hard-faced, horn-knuckled, pitying and uncomprehending Mrs. Halloran, and what I said, and what stupid and impotent gestures we made, and the behaviour of my heart and throat as these events transpired. I choose not. I choose some other part of all the things that are true to go bejeweled into the future. My hands were purple from the recent cold, and the deep unfashionable carpet was wet, a swamp, and my thought flashed to the future when I will tell some editor the anecdote of being kicked out of my uncle's house for the crime of my first real publication, and he will laugh too heartily and tip backward in his chair, and back in the present Mary mistook my soundless laugh for tears and squeezed my hand, the imperceptive darling. Mrs. Halloran came forward to take my arm with a look of perfect resignation to the sordid beast, Duty, and at that moment May Hilson and Kate Errol burst in the door, screaming at each other like a pair of crows, and when they turned hungrily toward the scene above their faces were bright from the icy air, their hats and hair in gorgeous disarray.

So _there, _Diary.

I sat up with Mary even after she had fallen asleep (she is sleepier since the 'flu) and watched the rain turn to ice and hail, and in the morning the trees were all sheathed in heavy ice, and some of the branches had fallen. Now I am really home- a strange feeling, but not a bad one after all. All my old books are here, and the familiar smells I didn't know I'd missed, and I feel blessedly alone and far from whatever talk there must inevitably be on Monday. Aunt Dan called this morning, and will only say that she can't understand why I would write such a thing after all of the Blakes had tried to be kind to me. Perhaps she didn't mean it to sound so much like I was the unwanted orphan. And they are all "disappointed" in my behaviour. Yes, how impertient of me to be _good _at something for once!

Was it really so unkind? I am trying to see it as Aunt Iz might. I suppose I _would _be angry if someone dscribed me as "tall and parched, like a stalk of corn in autumn," but only if I were certain it _was _me and not some fictional character. And Miss Amelia Stanton is _not _Isabella Brownell Blake, whatever their initial relationship- the story itself is wholly fanciful, and the local dignitaries all High School scholars in disguise. All that remains is that I have _seen her_. I stood outside her and _saw_. Is that so dreadful? Well, perhaps no one _really _wants to know what they look like to other people. Do I?

How would an author describe _me, _I wonder?

Tall- very mottled with freckles- brown hair, brown eyes. A longish face and a mouth inclined to amusement, perhaps. "More amused than sensitive." Bony shoulders, but thick at the waist- a good figure otherwise- not so showy as Ilse, but not wan and thin like some sylphs of her acquaintance. Smooth calves and narrow ankles- Evelyn looked- Evelyn examined. _Evelyn __examined __her __young __body __in __the __mirror_. _Her __hands __had __slender __long __fingers, __and __she __was __prouder __of __her __arms __than __propriety __strictly __allowed. _Narrow ribcage, wide hips. Hardly a fashionable form, but not without its admirers. _Her __eyes __were __bright __and __flashed __like_ No, eyes must not flash, however much one would like them to. My author must not be a poetaster. Eyes, nonetheless, like anyone's eyes; they will look at you if you come near. I have an ideal leg, but no one will ever see it, I fear. Of the visible parts, my best features are: my eyes, my neck, my arms. A strong, good body and an intelligent face- not beautiful, no, nor even "strangely alluring," but perhaps it is better not to be.

No, no, this won't do.

Wouldn't an author say, rather, _Evelyn __was __cold __and __haughty, __and __hid __her __bony __shoulders __in __fashionable __high __sleeves. _Or, _Evelyn __favoured __a __pompadour __style for her brown hair, __though __it __made __the __plainness __of __her __face __the __more __apparent. __In __truth, __she __loved __all __beautiful __things, __and gladly__made __herself __more __dull, __roughened __by __their __proximity._

_Evelyn's feet were too wide for her fashionable shoes, and her nose had long showed signs of coming into its inheritance._

_In forty years, Evelyn's sole publishing credit would remain that ill-fated story, which had the effect of alienating her from her friends and causing her to go temporarily mad from her abrupt re-entry into solitary confinement. While the story has never been reprinted, several copies still exist, including four well-preserved pages used in the papering of an outhouse in New Glasgow, with their original pen-and-ink illustrations. _

No, not this either; this is mock cruelty and mock wit. I can't really see myself that way- as a failure- because I don't believe yet that I _will _be. So I am only being disingenuous. I am only pretending to make fun of myself.

I shall ask Mr. Towers to-morrow to tell me if the story is cruel. He'll laugh at me, and pretend to fire me for purporting to be a "fine artist," but he will tell me, I think, if it is.

_Evelyn knew she really ought to go to bed, but she also_

_It had become impossible to tell the truth about Evelyn. Perhaps it was impossible to tell the truth about anyone, beyond the barest facts. Had it always been this way? _

**Blake, ****Evelyn ****Stella. ****b. ****February 18, ****1887, ****Shrewsbury, ****P.E.I., ****Dominion ****of ****Canada, **to Kenneth James and Rhoda Margaret (John) Blake, Owl, sub-editor of _The __Quill, _author of "The Country Schoolma'am," appearing last month in _Harper's __Magazine_. Insomniac. In love, perhaps. With own voice, maybe. First recorded literary endeavor: "Caged Phoenix," (poem) age 11 (burned).

Fingernails, hairs in a brush, scraps and patches, magic-lantern flashes.


	52. February 10, 1904: Childhood Library

**Wednesday, February 10, 1904**

To-night I am taking down books from my shelves, and cannot be dragged back to my studies for anything. Here is my little _Rubaiyat,_ with its pretty gold-and-blue cover, that Father bought me for my twelfth birthday- I think because it was pretty, and because he remembered someone telling him it was good. I cannot imagine he knew it overly well. Of course he had no idea what I wanted- he'd even sent Mrs. Halloran to find out, twice, and forgotten it both times. To think I was angry when I got it! There are the smudges of old ink and the ghosts of cocoa on its loved little creamy pages. In his carelessness he gave me a great gift. Now when I walk the lines come to me unbidden; they've woven themselves into my steps.

Here is _Evangeline_, which Aunt Dan gave me for Christmas the year I broke my ankle- seven years ago now! I was a child then, and I am not a child now- how strange that I should feel almost the same as I did then, and that writing it down I should immediately crave the taste of the toast Mrs. Halloran brought me ten times a day when I was trapped in my bed. I would eat nothing else, and I read _Evangeline _right into my marrow. Dear Longfellow is like a half-asleep old grandfather whose words grow more beautiful as they lose their sense. _Evangeline _is dreadful poetry in some places, I think, and yet it sings. I used to picture myself tearing through the woods in a gauzy nightie like the one in the frontspiece, with my golden hair- it _would _turn gold in daydreams, however much I tried to brown it for honesty's sake- flying around my shoulders in a bramble of light. I horrified the entire clan by announcing I would grow up to be French. They have let me forget that one, uncharacteristically; perhaps they're hoping I _will _forget it.

Here is _Jane __Eyre,_ the first book I ever read where I believed the heroine was a real person- and not only that, a mirror- too strong and clear a mirror, I think, of lonely, scowling little Evie, though I was never poor but in social graces. Despite that, I felt stupidly certain she would like me. I wanted to climb into the book and find her- I wanted to go to Lowood and _make _her be my friend, or rather I knew somehow that she already was and always had been. Somehow I was unable to think of it as fiction, or to notice it was set in the distant past- I simply felt if I could get to Jane, everything would be _better.-_that I could save us both. I imagined us growing up together- being maid of honor at her wedding to Mr. Rochester- comforting her when she fled the house and receiving happy, thoughtful letters from her well into her old age. Don't think ill of me, Diary ! In those days I was a most wretched little creature, and even Mary avoided me in school, because she thought- quite correctly- that I looked down on her family. How was I to know the prejudices of the Blakes were not those of the world in general ? Their clannishness ruined me for any normal human relations until I was old enough to know better- to old, really. I suppose it _was_my fault- Livia's father was _Uncle __Henry, _after all, and _she _never seemed to get along as badly. But whoever was to blame, there was a time when Jane Eyre, and Lila and Tom, were all I had between myself and utter solitude.

And here is my book of French verse, with its pungent odors and it wheeling, reckless freedom, and all the heaviness it carries with it, like a cloud bringing storms. How I wish I could write to M. Baudelaire – if letters could reach the past- to thank him. I would write to them all, to Robert Browning and the Brontes and sleepy old Longfellow and Whitman, and Shakespeare too, why not?- Would they be happy to hear from me, I wonder? Or would they be so plagued by letters from the future that they waved mine away like so much smoke?

Oh, if you only knew!

My name is Evelyn. I was born long after you were dead, and I love you. I was born long after you were dead, and you have saved my life more times than I can count.

.

. . . Will anyone ever feel this way about _me_, I wonder ?

I should like to imagine that they would- not that I aspire to be _Shakespeare,_or even Mrs. Browning. Or perhaps I do a _little_, in my heart of hearts- why lie- but even when I am _utterly __realistic_, I cannot help but hope, and even plan a little- repulsive vanity ! But need it be vanity ? Couldn't I hope to give something back to the world- to the ugly, friendless, stubborn and self-righteous Evies of the next generation and the next ? Is it so frivolous a thing to aspire to? It _isn't._I won't believe it is ! And I believe I _will _write something worthwhile one day- I mean, that will _matter_ to someone.

But to say so- even in private- makes me nervous and ashamed. Why ashamed ? I don't know. I know. I am afraid of everything.


	53. February 14, 1904: Valentines

**Sunday, February 14, 1904**

_If I loved you would you tell me what I ought to do_

_To keep you all mine alone, to always be true? _

_If I loved you, would it be a silly thing to do? _

_For I must love someone, really, and it might as well be you._

Friday was the grand Valentine's tribal ceremony at school; your Ev naturally _spoiled __everything _by being aloof and snippy and ripping Frank Sitwell's vinegar verse both down from the front hall and in half. Of course this was a shocking breach of etiquette, as you would know, poor old phoenix, if I hadn't burned you; a vinegar is anonymous, though everyone knows who it _means_, and to tear one off the wall is to acknowledge it both yours and _true_. But! I don't care! I know sometimes I _say_I don't care when I do, Di, but this time I am_honestly__and__forever_ empty of any sentiment even _faintly_ resembling a damn about what Frank Sitwell does or what he thinks about _anything, _least of all me. Of course May was rolling her eyes and whispering about it all the bright day long, and again at that interminable walking-dead Valentine's sleigh party Mary _begged _me to go to so I could stand beside her all evening shivering while she made moon-eyes at Fred Kent and covered them with both hands every time he glanced in their rough cardinal direction. Poor dear must have wondered what was so hideous about him.

I suppose May imagines I am "on the outs" with her now because I told her in no unceertain terms that that fat serpent Reid Orde is beneath her and she ought to be more discreet in general. May Hilson (I state for posterity's sake, in case no one else manages to set down this _fundamental __fact __of __our __existence, _lest whole volumes of the social record of Greater Shrewsbury, P.E.I. become utterly opaque to history) is clever enough in the vaguely laudable preparatory-education sense, but has the comprehension of a box turtle in an opium den when it comes to social relations. I suppose that is why I am so superhumanly patient with her gossiping and her minor treacheries; she simply won't or can't see things as _most _people do. To _her_ the Orde clan is a harmless collection of jolly good-looking boys and that is all, and if I try to point out the _extreme _inadvisability of allying herself with even a High School-educated Orde when she already has an uncle _in __prison _out West, she thinks I am somehow only doing it to _insult _her or because she thinks I am "jealous" or some ridiculous thing. Honestly, for the past _eight __years _I have done _nothing _but try to help May better herself, and even endured all manner of Henry-bellowing and Halloran-wringing, not to mention _constant _Father-fretting _to. __this. __day. _about my "low tastes" for it - which I did _not _tell her, by the way, because I am _not_ _like __that_. I _demanded _that she and Mary be invited to my twelfth birthday party when _dear _Aunt Dan tried to _lose _their invitations and pretend to me they had cancelled. _I_ called on May's stepmother every day for two weeks until she promised to let May go to High School. I stood by her when her cousin Lou had that hideous episode and everyone was burying "crazy Hilson" jokes in the conversation. I have _always _believed that May could aim much higher than her conditions suggest, and I have _tried _to give her the benefit of my position and experience.

And what does she do now? Truss herself up in the _single_ most hideous sway-backed electric-blue sateen horror _yet __witnessed __by man _and fling herself at stupid, chortling Reid Orde as though the world were her trebuchet. Even _Mary_ thought it was too much. I don't know _why _she won't let me help her choose patterns and fabrics; she's _said _to me a thousand times, "I wish I had your eye for clothes," yet she just hauls off and _wears _things no one on earth has any business wearing, and falls backward onto Hardscrabble Road farmhands _in __front __of __everyone_, and _flies _at me when I do her the _favour _of showing her herself. "I think _you _ought to be more discreet, _Evelyn,"_she snapped. "_I'm _not the one who ought to be more _anything_, especially _discreet. _And you know perfectly well what I mean, you old meddling old maid, so don't gawk, don't _eye _at me, don't do that slitty-eye _eye_ thing at me, _you __know _so don't make me say it, _Evelyn_ _Blake_."

That is how May talks when she is drunk; I don't know _who_ smuggled in the wine, but it was there, and to resist such things, to resist anything that will make her more fully May, more totally transparent, is utterly beyond her. I am sure she would eat opium and drink absinthe if such things ever managed to bob ashore. She would be one of the luckless girls who hung around the necks of poets in Baudelaire's day, if she had the bad luck to be born in the slums of Paris and not on our upright Island.

Of course Marshall was there, looking a little red and worn- though only briefly- to drive Reid and May and one of those stupid giggling Cavendish gingers May thinks are "such fun." Naturally the poor oaf made his bi-monthly attempt to talk to me about some Godforsaken thing or another; _naturally_ there is nothing at all to say about it except that if I never see another Orde as long as I live it will be approximately forty lifetimes too soon.

But then, you knew that, Diary.

I loathe Valentine's day.

Of course when we were all ten years oldit was great fun to sneak Valentines at each other and giggle over who-likes-who-with-a-capital-L, and write take-notices on the brick with bits of slate. But it's simply _grotesque _now that we're nearly grown. There are girls from our level in primary school already married with a child, yet we serious scholars, Shrewsbury's brightest, are still goosing each other in the hall and stuffing minstrel cartoons and lace-edged Gift Cards into bookbags and posting the vilest innuendos as vinegars simply because. . . because, why? I don't know. Because it can't possibly harm _Frank __Sitwell _to do so, I suppose. It _never _harms the boys to make innuendoes involving _themselves_; even that vile smirking dairy-heir Robbie Crenshaw never saw so much as a reprimand after poor Marie was sent away, though there was never any doubt about which old farmer sowed _that _seed. I suppose it was very stupid of me to tear down those verses- as stupid as it is for May to go off with Reid O.; I suppose I shall deserve any ill treatment I get. Never mind. I am done thinking about it. Father is coming next month anyway- "stopping," he says, on the way to his "honeymoon" in "Sunny Europe"- which I suppose means Italy rather than Denmark- and can take care of anything with a few choice words to Principal Hardy and associates. Uncle Henry could, but he's still sore about the _Harper's_incident. Pah! Why am I related to such _philistines? _They are still not speaking to me, the whole house, like pouting children. Only Lila shuttles unhappily back and forth, picking at her collar and resenting me. Ugh! I wish Tom were home.

Now I have a bag full of ugly, trashy, simpering cards I don't want and which I am bound by the Law of Girlhood to paste into a scrapbook and cherish in an offhand way for the next eighty years. I loathe the "serious" ones even more than the dialect ones; at least the latter keep their simpering to the surface where it belongs; it makes me feel ill and ashamed to read the dreadful tick-tock poetry and pastel sewing-card cherub-and-skylark "art" of the former. I think I should rather not express a thing at all than do it so badly, or have it done _for _me by some poor sweatshop poetaster at a copy-desk somewhere. Perhaps it's good money for some young hopeful; I don't know. I only know it is as inadequate to _my _feelings as a teaspoon to Niagra Falls. I don't want to commit the _lie _of humouring anyone who pretends it _is._

Anyone, that is, except Mary, who knows I hate the whole run of shop-bought cards and painted her own for me: a little grey and blue sillouhette of girl and boy under an umbrella in the rain, and the following, in her best imitation of calligraphy:

Dear Ev,

In the storms of life  
When you need an umbrella

May you have to uphold it  
A handsome young "fella."

Love, Your Friend, Mary Carswell

No, it's no more profound than any of the others. But somehow I don't mind _that _sentiment, or find it so dismayingly small in the face of everything.

I suppose I have been unfair to these inadequacies. After all, _you_know as well as anyone how much _I_am inadequate to my feelings, and to the world as a whole and every single individual thing in it, give or take a puff piece for the _Times_. And haven't I contradicted myself by declaring the Ordes and their kin a hopelessly low connection for poor headstrong May in the same breath that I brag about being an _egalitarian?_

No, I don't care about _that_, either; I won't let you spoil my perfect yarn of loathing in the last hours of a day I loathe; I shall deal with all that useless Moral Improvement fiddle-twaddle some other time. I contain multitudes, you see. I am going to bed.


	54. February 1415, 1904: Ultraviolet

**Feb 14 or 15, 1904**

3:00 AM

I don't know what to do. Night gets me. Night always gets me somehow. Fred Kent's mother went mad after a lamp exploded , turned her pretty pasty face to jagged tooth and worm-white sateen scars. Maybe it was on a night like this it happened, with no sound but the ice cracking and this scratch, scratch; maybe she was fumbling in the dark with fire and ink to set down something unspeakable. Maybe maybe.

Sleep is sulking; prim chaste Presbyterian sleep won't come near me, nor should it. If sleep were my daughter, I would say "Don't let me catch you chumming around with that Evelyn Blake character." Make better friends. Old Fairfax Morrison went mad from a thwarted desire. Sometimes I think I must go mad.

Whine, whine, willow-willow-waily.

I think it must have been on a night like this, a white night, a crackling splitting night, when the ink carries you- me - her along the dark ridge of time into morning. That's the kind of prose we call _ultraviolet, _Diary, purple beyond the bounds of purpleness, but let it stand. What is it, Evie? When Marshall O. came to pick up his book-learned rake of a brother from the Valentine's party, he caught me in the blue shadow of a tree; he put his hand on me, Diary, on my clothes, anyway, which after all are more _me _than I am, and _What is it, Evie, why are you shy all of a sudden; _he asked that of me in his flat quiet way, and I said- what? That I hadn't seen him in class and thought this that something, and _is it someone else, Evie_, as thought there could be anyone else, as though that were any longer possible in this world. Under the endless sea of stars I have one anchor, and he knows it; I could see that he knew it; I could _hear _it in his breath; he would know it even now, in his musty flea-ridden bed in that rotting South Prince Street boardinghouse; he would feel on his skin the wish-hands of my hideous desire, if he had the sense of a gnat.

Thank God he doesn't.

Somehow this has happened.

I don't mean the awful writing; that's nothing. I don't care; I'll burn it if I have to. The ink is a free black beast that carries me where it will. Ultraviolet. Purple-beyond-purple. Why should I be ashamed of a purple phrase when my whole heart is purple, yea, and my lungs and liver and all the air I breathe?

I mean, somehow, I am in love. With Marshall Orde.

There! I said it. Do you see how shaky that line is? It looks like a child came in and wrote it for me. But I set it down; it's real.

_Is _it love? _No, _of course not. I know better than that. It's simply base- base desire, barely distinguishable from that other vice, if at all; that ought to be enough to dispel it. If you'd told me two years ago I would use the word _love _to describe such a feeling I should have frozen you out and vowed never to speak to you again. Yet there it is on paper, and I haven't- I've been looking at it for long ticks of the clock and cracks of the ice on the Lombardies and I haven't struck it out yet, and I won't- yet. I'll regret that in the daylight, but tonight it stands.

I don't know why I stayed so long at the party. Perhaps it was for Mary's sake, or at least I told myself. (And _did _that Kent puppy so much as beg her pardon in four and a half hours? Diary-my-love, he did not. I make no pretense of being surprised).

Whatever the reason, I stayed long enough for M. to come up to me and start talking in his soft flat voice. It reminds me of a sea becalmed, that voice, dark and rippling and teeming somehow. "I guess you heard I flunked," he said. "Looks like I'm not so smart after all, without you to coach me."

I said. "You only need to apply yourself. You can't expect to do well if you're working every spare hour."

He shrugged. "Won't have any money otherwise. But you were a good teacher." He put his hand on my arm. If I had imagined my old attraction had diminished since the summer, I was wrong. It flashed as hotly as ever, a thing not-me and the sum of me at once. I pulled away. "Heard old Mrs. Blake got her skirts in a bunch over a story of yours." He grinned. "I'll bet it was a kicker. Truth is, she's jealous of you, Evie."

"Don't be crude," I said. "Will you take the exams again?"

He made his shoulder twitch.

"You ought to finish. You've only another year. I thought you wanted to make something of yourself."

Then he said what I was dreading.

"You know, I think I could stick it out all right, Evie. . . if you'd let me court you honest."

All at once I saw what a repulsive careless flirt I had been, how badly I had hidden anything. As long as he hadn't _said _anything, I thought I could pretend there _was _nothing. I don't know what I said then. It was feeble and brittle and contained the word "no." What else matters? I pulled away from his hand and he did not touch me again. If he had- even there, in full view of everyone- I do not know that I would be writing this now. I don't know what would be true of me. But he didn't. He leaned like an old tree, and breathed in slowly, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and I was safe.

And _I did the right thing. _To continue to see him and _not _to be "courting honest" is unthinkable- it was always unthinkable, only I was too complacent to see it. I cannot help flirting with him any more than I can help being aloof and sarcastic with insufferable Emily Starr. May was right about me. Frank Sitwell is right about me. And then what? I would be throwing myself and my reputation, and the good name of my family, on the dung heap. And to really _marry_him would be worse. I would be happy for a year, _if that, _and then miserable and abject ever after. The Ordes would loathe me as much for my "stuck-up" ways as the Blakes and Johns for my defection from "good stock" to "beasts of the field." But that isn't it, either; _I _would be unhappy, and always uncertain of money, and too lonely to imagine, once that demonic _flash _had worn off and I were still lawfully bound to the Tribe of Orde and its drunkards and draughty houses, its folk remedies and one-eyed matriarchs and dirty kitchens, for the rest of my natural life. I don't believe I'm considering this even to reject it. It's so absurd I ought to be locked up in an asylum for bothering to put it in writing. Dear God, I wish-

But not even tonight's wild ink will carry me past the purple to what I wish. What I wish is not printable, so let it go.

Only there's a part of me- that reckless purple part I sometimes think of as _my true self, _unfettered by family or law- that wanted to say to hell with it. To say yes. To take Marsh Orde's hand and walk straight back down Queen Street with his lovely ox-arm about my waist. T_hat _Evelyn- improbably slender future-poet, enemy of convention and cliche, dreamer of timeless scented dreams, would have thrown caution to the winds. Yes, she would have said, yes.

But the other part of me is stronger.

No, I never wrote this. In the morning, I will never have written. These pages will go into the stove, and there wil be a lovely paper fringe in the copybook where they used to be. But tonight-

Even now, I could find him again. Even now, I could go back, say, I was wrong. Say, I am the real Evie now, and I am yours. But I know I won't. I'm not so stupid as that. Do you imagine, Diary- no, you're made of paper- I'll _tell _you- I am terrified of the years before me. I am afraid to be alone and afraid to be tied down. Every step seems the wrong one— every choice a door slammed shut and locked forever.

What if love is nothing but the sum of all the things we're warned not to mistake for it?

What if I have it all wrong, and what I think is base animal vice is really _what real love feels like. _How would I ever _know? _What if we are given each one chance at love, and _this is mine_, and I am throwing it away forever? Would it matter, would it make it better somehow, if it were really love, and not the other? No, I don't think so. In a fairy tale the sweet-natured son of hired hands and ne'er-do-wells is really the prince. He throws off poverty and ignorance with his clothes, and it is the prince you marry: rough and clean and humble and gentlemanly all at once. But Marsh is Marsh and will be forever. And I will be. . . what hollow, gilded, chattering thing?

It'll be dawn soon enough, and Mrs. Halloran will be stumping up the stairs to shame me for being "up all night scribbling nonsense." Yes, I know, I know too well. Death of cold. School in five hours. World without end.


	55. February 15, 1904: Joy By Morning

**Monday, February 15, 1904**

Though weeping endureth for a night, joy cometh- not in the _morning, _exactly, for I overslept first period and Study and had a splitting headache all day, but in late afternoon, by way of the post office- no fewer than f_our _letters today, including the first _real _letter Livia has written in months! She is all right, happy even; the children are dunces but that was to be expected. She saw my story in _Harper's _and said it made her _shiver_. Think of it! "The locals are quite shocked that their poor schoolma'am could have a _real __writer _for a cousin," she writes, "though some are skeptical, maintaining Blake is a common name and no such fame could ever touch their community, even second-hand. Naturally all want to know if "Miss _Amelia_" is meant therefore to be a portrait of _me_. Not your intention, I'm sure!"

And Tom is going to be home for my birthday! I am always a little ashamed of how lonely I get without Tom. We are going to have a splendid time. Tom knows all about the _Harper's _incident and has promised to try and patch it up, though beneath it all I suspect he thinks I have behaved rather foolishly. Uncle Henry respects Tom, even if Aunt Iz doesn't. They _all _respect Tom- I could speak the truth forty times a day and they's never do a thing but brush it off or chide me, but let Tom say the same thing once, and it's Word of Law. So perhaps it will be all right very soon. And Cal, who sent a long letter of his own full of foolish cleverness, won't be coming with him after all- I don't know whether to be happy or disappointed. At the moment, I am mostly happy.

Cal Perkins is the sort of boy I ought to love. He reads widely and seems to _enjoy _words rather than to wade clumsily and gingerly through them, and he is jolly and affectionate without being unwholesome. He writes long, rambling, funny letters and fills them up with offhand compliments. And he comes from a "good" family in Maine- wealthier than the Blakes, I suspect. And he certainly seems to like me a good deal. Well, perhaps I will, by and by. I won't think of it now.

Mary, meanwhile is cracked to pieces over Fred Kent, and naturally wanted to sob on me and wheedle advice. "Never mind him," I said. "If he can't draw _you_ without shoe-horning some other girl in, he's a pretty poor artist, if you ask me. Why don't you have Millicent do your portrait, if you want a portrait?"

"I don't _love_ Millicent," she sobbed.

Therein lies the problem! Poor Mary still imagines she would be lost without me, without my "good sense." "How can you be so sensible, Ev?" I didn't have the heart to tell her what a hypocrite I am. I can't imagine it would do either of us any good.

Much heated chatter about this year's spring concert- Miss Alymer has ambitions for a "musical," though I honestly doubt how far such a thing can be successful. If we pooled voices with Queen's, it might come off all right, but really I think we ought to play to our strengths. Ilse Burnley has the best voice on the Island for _speaking, _but she'll spoil it entirely if she tries to sing; Kate Errol is an obvious choice, but she'll refuse the lead simply to thwart her sister and Miss Alymer, and will demand an insupportable quantity of flattery to get her back on stage. As for the boys, I don't know. Paul Laird in in Chorus, but he's buried with all the rest in a kind of mildly pleasing slurry. Greg Mackenzie had a beautiful reedy tenor. I don't like to think about it. But the thing is decided- we have only to hammer out the songs. I know Tom is going to try to needle me into doing "Girl of the North Country" with Paul. I hate singing. I used to love it, but that was before everything in the world became a contest between triumph and humiliation. Now I only ever bother to do the things I can be best at- at least when other people are looking.


	56. February 18, 1904: Happy Birthday

**Thursday, February 18, 1904**

To-day was my birthday. I have decided I am glad that M. Perkins hasn't come ; if he didn't spoil the day with glibness he'd have spoiled it by playing the suitor. I should be happy to mourn his absence and brush my lips lingeringly over his earnest meandering gobbledygook and unsolicited studio photo, but I simply can't bring myself to _affect _such emotional abandon. I don't know what to make of him, in any case. Half the time he seems smitten, and the other half I can't be sure he isn't making fun of me. He sent a book by post instead- a pale pink, hideously embossed, gilt-edged volume with tissue-clouded authorial profile- _The __Caste __of __Vere __de __Vere _by Mark Delange Greaves. It was accompanied by a note fondly wishing and fervrently hoping this and that, and explaining that Tom had mentioned I enjoyed _novels,_ and this one seemed to be popular with young ladies. I much suspect Tom of maneuvering poor Cal into buying a joke gift without realizing it; Tom squashes awful laughs against his shirt-cuffs and admits to nothing.

Do I feel changed? No more than I do every day, I suppose. Tom came in late yesterday night, all tinny with the cold of land and sea, and naturally made much of my advanced age, and called me "Grandmother Evelyn," and brought a magnifying glass with my gift (_The __Ambassadors__- _new book by H. James) which he then took back, saying the professors at Dalhousie would be missing it, and teased me about "netting" silly Cal Perkins despite my tremendous age. I didn't much want to go to Aunt Dan's however much she may have "forgiven" me, so Tom and Lila and I kicked about the parlor here for a few hours, then wrapped up and tromped down to the Shoppe to open books and judge them haughtily and snap them shut again, and made a similar nuisance of ourselves at the S. Hotel tearoom, and quick-stepped it back home to drip on the carpet and recall all the past birthdays and Christmases and pranks we could remember from the lofty perch of our age and experience. Lila seems much herself again- perhaps she doesn't resent me as much anymore. Or perhaps it was Tom. He seems to make everything better- brighter and clearer. All the things I imagine are so dreadful don't seem dreadful anymore, though I suppose the old awfulness will begin to creep in again when he goes back to Dalhousie. Perhaps it's because so many of our oldest memories are the same- I feel more a part of myself, if that makes sense.

All my skirts will be long by the summer, and the old shorter ones cut up for patches or turned into bits and bobs, and it _is _strange, however much it may be obvious and inevitable. And unjust, somehow. Not that I want to be a child forever, but that so momentous a change should creep over us like a fog, and have no attendant ritual but these trivial and random alterations, and be stumbled through alone and unspoken of except in whispers and giggles and the muffled language of fashion.

I suppose if I were a heathen in Africa or some such place I should have to go sit in a tent for two weeks, and tend a fire with green woodchips to cover me in sacred smoke, and tattoo my face with ash, and no doubt I would complain about _that, _too.

_Do _heathens complain of their customs? Do the heavy-lidded young heathen men and girls go on sprees and denounce the tents and the ash of their fellows, and moan unceasingly about the utter unfairness of the summer harvest dance, the tackiness of the current run of war chants, the unflattering new cut of the latest grass skirts? One always imagines such far-away peoples as somehow inherently satisfied, simply going on in the same way from year to year and generation to generation, but perhaps it isn't like that. Perhaps if Jane Eyre had gone off to the tropics with St. John, she would have found a little heathen girl as lonely and high-minded and dissatisfied as _she_ had been - a scowling black Evie, maybe, saved less by St. John's clumsily translated prayers than by the astonishment that comes of learning there were kindred spirits in the world- that even in these linen-laden ghost-faced aliens she might still find her own secret feelings mirrored- stretched or marred, perhaps, by differences of language and custom, but _true _all the same, recognizable amid the strangeness. Perhaps that recognition is worth more, to some people, than mere religion- though _don't_ tell Mary I said so, Diary!

Father wires he will arrive two weeks from today on the Thursday evening ferry. I would be happier to see him if he were on his own, but it is a _honeymoon_, you see; so my dough-faced dull-eyed mother-doll is legally bound to tag along. I don't know why they have to stop here. There's nothing to see or do on the Island in March; there's not even a stark beauty any longer, only leaden skies and frozen mud and rain and the ice breaking and re-breaking, a half-unheated old shambles of a house and a surly cramp-plagued daughter who boils hats and sows contention. I wish I didn't dread meeting poor, dear Chinless as much as I do- I _shouldn't- _and really, who knows that we won't be bosom friends after all? She _is _only five years my senior.. . . "and _you're _no beauty yourself, Evelyn," as Kate Errol helpfully reminded me when I was the only one of her friends to point out that those new saucer front-buttons are not in the least flattering to her sort of figure.

Kate _will _take any advice as an insult. I think she is worse this year than ever before. She and May are terrible and beautiful to behold when they start in about the spring "musical." Kate is all too aware of her own gifts and heckles everyone into reminding her by loudly declaring herself worthless untill the sheer weight of falsehood compels one to correct her, and May, who could not be disingenouous if she tried, is blissfully convinced that Kate admires _her _in particular and will swoon and die without her constant reassurance.

I am glad I have no such conceits or illusions. I know that I am quite reasonably good at one or two things, hopeless at a few, and tolerable at the rest, and never make the unsightly mistake of pretending I haven't the brains to sort out for myself which is which.

I am, for example, very bad at getting what Halloran _will _call my "beauty sleep," and rather good at burning great white holes in the night and scribbling nonsense that may or may not clamber its way out of being nonsense in time. Not a bad deal, all told; I think it suits me. I shall scribble even more nonsense before I cover my ink-pot and plunge into bed - I shall thereby indulge myself shamelessly- to-day was my birthday, and I won't count it over till I've fallen asleep. . . no, not till I've been shouted awake and dragged down the stairs to school again.


	57. March 6, 1904: Perspective

**Sunday, March 6, 1904**

Nervous. Not sure why. I've been writing again for magazines; maybe that's it. After Tom left I decided to ask Mr. Towers straight out if I ought to pursue this- the writing, I mean- or if I ought to stick to puff pieces. He said, "Depends, old girl, everything depends. What's keeping you from doing what you want, eh? There aren't any chains on you that I can see." I tried to ask if he would read my new story and tell me if it was any good, but he waved me off, with a sick-stomach pucker. "Good God, girl, I thought you knew better than to ask a thing like that! Publish and I'll read it. Where's my damn columns, eh?"

I have taken this as a yes.

Perhaps that's it. I am finishing a new story to send out. Ought to be finishing, rather; I can't keep my hands on it. I keep getting up to walk the floor, or open the stove, or wrap up or pick at the cold meat down-stairs. There's no risk of it being really published; _Harper's_was a fluke. Still, it sits unfinished, with a sort of fence around it, like a magnet's aura, and everything seemse fraught and shivering and out of joint. It's nothing to do with school. I'm dreading Father's arrival with the Chinless, I suppose.

To-day I was shaking so much that I ripped out my "frame" and scattered the dead hair all to the four winds. Immediate regret. Halloran scolding me as we speak. I sat with my hair wailing down everywhere in all its awful mousy split-endedness; briefly pondered consequences of walking out the front door just like that, hatless and fraying, copper-plate Girl of the North Country. Thought better of it; pondered asking Halloran to put it in a simple Cadogan, thought better of _that_, and knotted the whole mess Quaker-style and jammed a hatpin through it, thinking to let Mary braid it up when I arrived at her stitch-party. Was immediately pounced on by Ilse and Kate in ecstacies over my new "hairstyle" and how inexpressibly hideous the other had been- thoughtful, sensitive dears that they are.

Ilse is in a state. Her precious, foolish Bootblack, for whom she will brand you a liar and a two-headed scrod should you suggest she has any feeling whatever but lightinging-white contempt, was caught by that poor hag Mrs. Dutton covering _dear _Emily Starr with a sloppy rain of slum kisses, _in __the __dark_, at eleven o' clock at night, and as she can't bear to look her darling Emily's treachery in the face, she must therefore rage and fume about the Bootblack's _bad __manners_. Diary, I _feel _for her, but it's really terribly tiresome to listen to. She burned up all the air at Mary's stitch party with her vitriol. Finally, I decided to set her straight

"Honestly, Ilse dear, it' s very simple," I said. "Emily knows your feelings, yet she continues to flirt with Perry [that is the Bootblack's name]. I call that mean and cowardly. If someone _I _thought of as a friend. . ."

"_Dear," _snapped Ilse_,__"_if you don't shut your mouth, I'll shut it for you, Evelyn _dear," _she said. "You, don't know the first thing about Emily Starr, _dear_, and you never will. Emily is- If it weren't for Emily. . ." Suddenly she shook her head, refusing something. "But of course, it's not your fault, _dear. _I wouldn't expect a narrow-minded squab-hearted _iguanodon _like you to understand Emily_. __Dear._"

She got up and walked across the room. In the midst of everything else I felt a stab of envy that she should be beautiful in her worst moments, her strange eyes dazzling, her face flushed. _I __do __understand_. Mary saw me form the words with my mouth, but no sound came out. If not for Emily, what? When May Hilson first took my hand among the sorry bare trees of Shrewsbury Primary, a thousand endless years ago, I had lived a child's age in such a state of brittle, glowering loneliness that I no longer cared that her whole pit of relations were an unwholesome, scheming lot, or whether she would climb on and betray me; indeed, that was the only reason she came for me at all- on a dare from Kitty Barret, to giggle over later- but it didn't matter. It would never matter. There was no way then that I could _make _it matter. I was parched; she was water. Everyone else would come second. Even now- "What is it," I said at last, "that I don't understand?"

"Oh, go hang," said Ilse. "Perry Miller can break into every house on Queen Street for all I care; I just feel sorry for him that he can't manage not to be an _ass_ for ten minutes together. Now, don't start jabber-jawing about _circumstances_, Evelyn; I _see _your mouth getting ready to say something priggish, so just slap it back down again, there's a good girl. There's no point in talking about it, and never mind your expert opinion on the matter."

She flopped on the bed in a heap and rolled on her back, cat-like, and seemed to have argued herself into better spirits, so I let the matter drop. And I sit here now burning with the unsaid, wishing I could fly up Cardigan Street and burst through her door to tell her: I understand about Emily, I don't blame you.

But I don't; I won't. What purpose would it serve? It would only make things worse. If Ilse came swaggering up to me saying, "Look, Evelyn, I know all about you!" I would. . . I sometimes _imagine _I would be grateful, but would I? No; I would be angry and lash out and fret in secret that she _knew _something. . . oh, everyone _imagines _they want to be understood, but only as they _want _to be understood- never as they _are_. If anyone ever managed to see me _as __I __am_, I would _drown _myself- or at the very least, deny everything. Yet everything seems so much worse in isolation, louder, like a fly in a jar. "Everything"- what do I mean? Sometimes I feel as though it would be better to be _really _bad- to run away and live by piecework, or worse- than to go on being rotten and stinking under a clean skin. Really? No, not really! No, I don't know what I want or _why_. Only to be _utterly __lost _seems at times preferable to this. . . no, I am sensible enough to know the difference- I am not one of the vile King Leopold's negroes with my hands cut off at the wrists, not yet a Hindoo widow shoved backward on the pyre; I have no right to words like _torment _and _oppression_. If I _had, _at least I would have some _reason _to yowl like an old she-cat - at least I would _know_ _who __to __blame_.

(Oh, but you do know, Evie darling. . . only- you don't like the answer- that's all).

In my old burned diary. whenever I read about some dreadful thing happening in a jungle or a veldt or a slum somewhere I would dutifully jot it down, along with a wholly unconvincing account of how simply awful I felt over it and how I wished there were something I could do and how much of my money I was about to dump into the mission box over it as soon as I possibly could.

Those pages were full of mechanically mincing doll-jointed pieties on man's inhumanity to man, poorly disguised as my overflowing emotions. Perhaps I _did _have such emotions, but the chore of setting them down, and proving myself a remarkably sensitive child - which was the only real point of these exercises, after all - seemed to turn all of them chalky and false. I will not set down any such show-pieties here, and so will seem terribly ignorant and unconcerned with the greater world. This will be true enough, I suppose. I know well enough how petulant it sounds to wish myself among the legitimately wretched, or to whinge and howl over less than nothing. Yet howl I do, and my hand shakes, and I pace the room like a loose-haired madwoman for no earthly reason, and you don't mind, do you, my dear, dumb, patient friend?

New _Quill _a shambles, by the way; Scoville even more apoplectic than usual over the total degeneration of literary culture. Paul Laird is the most _incompetent _intelligent person I have ever had the misfortune to meet.


	58. March 11, 1904: Family Time

**Friday, March 11, 1904**

Dear useless diary, if I don't get two minutes to myself I will shatter like a cold jar in boiling water. No, it's not that bad- it only _feels _so. I'm "having a good time" and Father's new wife is not such a bad sort, though she isn't interesting. Only I can't _think_ when I can't be alone. I don't know how our pioneer forefathers managed it in their smoky cabins and communal beds—I should have _burst_. As it is I've begged off an hour to "write a school composition;"the composition is real, but _you_must come first, little as you can do to help me. Father arrived at last late Wed., C.C.B. and a dozen steamers in tow. They leave for Europe in four days, and will return to a grand new house in Vancouver, with shower bath and central heating, and a life already in progress. In the meantime, must go to dinner at Uncle Henry's & endure patient & affectionate concern regarding _why _I didn't go to Madie Simpson's basket social on Tues. & _why __on __earth _I woudn't want to go tobogganing with the Darcy girls Saturday and _honestly, _Evelyn, what has gotten into you; what she been so fractious about these days, anyway, Henry? Is she _smashing _on some high-school boy, now, ha ha? Come on, Isabella, I know she must confide in you (small laugh).

I am asked meticulous questions about each of my classes in turn, only so he can discourse at length on how utterly bewildering and unnecessary he finds the whole endeavour; Latin especially. _Latin. _Evie, are you turning Papist again (belligerent chuckle)? Who told those cubs at the High School to teach Latin to young girls? What on earth will you ever _use _it for? And he will turn to the Chinless- who is even more chinless in the flesh, and forever jutting out her doughy jaw as though Charles Gibson might be sketching her from the bushes, and whose awful glittering blue eyes are sunk in baby-fat and who squeals when she speaks and tries to bury it in coughing - with a crinkle-eyed smile of conspiratorial good humour, to assure her, I suppose, that he and his Evie-girl are really the best of friends, and any contradiction on my part is all in fun, and I shall glare at him and later regret it, and bite my tongue and manage to smile tolerantly at everything. Why should he suffer doubt, simply because I am not the Evie he imagines? What does he know about me, after all? Nothing - thank God.

I feel like a wet dog, shaking drops of thoughts from my head. Ungrateful Evie-girl! your own ought-to-be-dear Father comes from Vancouver to tend to you, and interrupts his already-delayed honeymoon for _your_ sake, and all you can manage to feel is put upon.

For shame! But I am tired, and to-morrow I know I shall be _forced_ to go tobogganing, and so what, so what? If I were left alone, I would only sit inside and write- and what good has that ever done anyone? Mr. Towers was right- I can only write in the one voice, the purse-lipped, unkindly laughing _Cynthia_-voice he thinks is so humorous and good-for-selling-hats. Anything else is a heavy clay mask, unfit to look through the uneven eye-slits of. I've tried—I tried this morning in school and was scolded for inattention—I can't do it.

Am I fishing for insincere compliments, _a __la _Kate Errol?

No, I think not.

I am only _assessing __my __position. _If I were to grab, say, Mary Carswell by the collar and shout at her, "I obviously have no future in literature and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise!" well, _that_ would certainly look suspicious, but _you, _dearest flower of the pulp mill, are only a hollow to whisper secrets in, and _you _can speak to me only in my own hand. If I am fishing, it is an inefficient operation to be sure. Or does that only make it worse? Well, never mind.

Last week-end I set all day at writing a tale that turned abruptly to verse and back again, and ended up nothing but a kind of shambling patchwork of corpses. The dispiriting thing is that I _know _how bad it is, and yet can do nothing to help it. Stubborn as I am, I knead and pull and pinch, and my hand is wrenched from writing, and there is nothing there. I was trying to write about Marsh, I think. I went to see him- now, don't scold! Tuesday afternoon; he hadn't been back to school at all and I felt certain somehow I had ruined his life and was bound to go and harp at him to come back to school instead of pining over me. _Quelle __egoiste! _Well, he is not pining. He only laughed and held out his hand. "Well, it's sweet of you to say" he said. "but I guess it wasn't for me, the whole school thing, no?" Marshall, whose fingernails are cracked, whose lips are blistered. Who is so careless in his speech he says "no" for "you know." Who will have a dozen girls in easy, sordid Hardscrabble fashion before he settles down with some prudish sturdy wench with a head blessedly free of the ability or inclination to imagine them. Who is, after all, nothing like I have portrayed him, and nothing at all like what I imagine. When I turned to go he gripped my hand and looked at me breachingly. I meant to write "beseechingly," but I was wrong.

I suppose I deserve- no, I won't begrudge it, I _fully deserve_ to be laughed at. To meet him at the livery I put on a greasy old ulster and knotted my hair up flat under a flannel wrap, so that no one would see my shadow on the wall and think _Evelyn_, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the foyer glass I wished at once to be my disguise, a sweet, stupid country girl off to see her "fella" at the stable. Damn all poetry! No wonder Aunt Iz spits the word with such venom. _Poetry_, girls, will be your downfall. I used to laugh at Aunt Dan and poor Greg and Tom worrying over my reading habits, but you see, it has all come true; I read all the wrong things, filled my head and lungs and blood with trash, and they have infected my heartbeat and my footfalls and every rhythm, so that I can't so much as walk down the street without being flooded and heralded by a whole Dominion Day parade of unholy joys.

Better I should "stay inside and sit around like a lump," as poor Father says. But there's no way of explaining _that_, and tobogganing appears to be my immutable fate. Then on Sunday we shall all be dragged to church and Ladies' Aid and I shall be obligated to tote my adolescent stepmother around like a pudgy bejeweled handbag and be pleasant to a lot of tittering matrons I should like nothing better than to see spontaneously combust. If only Tom were here! But he has the excuse of his studies; what excuse do _you_ have, Evelyn?

There's Halloran on the stairs, and dinner ahead. Honestly, Diary, I don't know whether to laugh or beat my head against the wall.


	59. March 21, 1904: A Poor Excuse

**Sunday. March 21 1903**

They are well and truly gone now - thank God. Why did they come at all? Everything is the same, only swirled around and unsettled, like trash in a street after a high wind- stirred up in a mad dance and jilted. What is there to say about it? I sat between them or across, ate and was pecked and petted and inspected for signs of an improved complexion, better posture, a more winning expression - sit up, Evelyn; open your eyes a little, Evie-girl; no one likes a shuttered house; corners up, Evie-girl- that's my smile, now, there's the girl I remember. I've a scented letter and a Vancouver postcard for my troubles, wishing things could be otherwise, signed your loving - Father- latter word in a black self-conscious whirl, a signature that knows its own finality. Oh, what's the use of writing anything? Everything is the same and will be the same until the world ends. Why did I dream they would take me with them, any more than the wind would take me with it? Dull cliche of a dream for a dull, heavy child raw with envy of the slender-boned wind and all its kin. You're not a child anymore, Evelyn- isn't that what you wanted?

Never mind. Doesn't the world go on? Aren't there dances and weddings and funerals and the tops of trees a-tossing, and all of that? And shouldn't we rejoice in such gossip like a happy dog in dirt? This is a poor excuse for a diary, Miss Blake, I daresay. One would think there was nothing at all to Shrewsbury but one sorry sour-faced girl and a host of shadows.

That won't do. You must hear all the news of Greater Shrewsbury, in all its pettiness and splendor, and you will see what a ferocious roil of humanity we really are! Let me see. . . Elsbeth Mackenzie of St. Clair married Dennis John of Derry Pond on Friday afternoon, under a bower of wire-and-paper roses, one-fifteenth of them hand-puckered by Your Faithful Correspondant amid a gaggle of third cousins, under a rain of gossip, some of it about local and distant suicides: Mrs. Sanford H. Montgomery, Paris Green; Mr. Matthew Woolner, rope, Miss Adele Hanley, frigid waters, a pocketful of stones. Fairfax Morrison, held briefly at Falconwood Farm in Charlottetown after an attack on Miss Ethel Rainey of Shrewsbury, 13, was seen again at the Priest Pond post office last Wednesday, his black dog having (presumably) waited at the Falconwood gates for his return. No update on the mental state of Ethel, previously confined to the spare room with shrieking. Quoth Miss Luella John, 21, "I know I couldn't eat for a month after he grabbed me, such a fright as I had!" The wonder is we aren't_ all_ mad, I said- didn't really say- pinched a pleat into a circle of white paper and twisted it onto the poor snow-covered bower in silence. The French say things in their bent English and are giggled over for their troubles, the Irish likewise. Women of various ages wear things to church, in style and out of it, and "make talk" thereby.

Two St. Clair girls have died of the mumps this week and one of our High School Preps is down with the same - an epidemic brewing, as far as Ilse B. is concerned. Mrs. H. warns against "foolishness" of my going out of the house, while Uncle Henry reminds me that Father hates to see his money wasted on a hermit and a wallflower. "I can't very well marry money if I die of the mumps, now, can I?" was my ungrateful and unkind reply to the latter concern. Mr. Henry Blake later overheard telling Mrs. Henry that he can't see where I get my poor attitude at all. A little irony for you, Diary; I hope you enjoy it.

This week-end Miss Evelyn B. was inveigled to stand up and pour tea on behalf of the Young People's Mission Band at Mrs. Lilian Burke Mackenzie's parlor dance, and did so despite a well-known indifference and even hostility to the conversion and consequent clothing in ugly and inappropriate woolens of the world's heathens. Later E.B. and several friends, for most of which she has almost no human feeling, attended a noisy skating party hosted by Miss Hannah Adamson, and at which Mr. Marshall O. made several inappropriate suggestions to Miss. E.B. for which the latter ought to have slapped him full in the face, and May H. left early with new (old) friends of a disreputable nature; Kate E. to E.S.B: "Haven't you _any _control over her?" No, my dear, prim, ignorant Kate, nor over you, or Mary or Ilse or myself. Old Sam Big Sandy McKay is predicted to lose the mortal coil within the week, though no one will say it aloud- rudeness or bad luck or some such superstition. They will talk around it instead, round and round in dizzy madhouse circles. Luke Elliot has come round to old Malcolm Shaw's to bargain for the whiskey he keeps in a cupboard up at Poor Almira's house - he's scheduled to be drunk in two days and by a stroke of ill luck can't get over to Halifax to purchase any, nor will the housewives of Blair Water avail him of their digestive wines. Much speculation on what will happen if Mr. Elliot breaks schedule for the first time in twenty years. E.B. ponders taking some of Aunt Dan's cordial over to Blair Water as an act of mercy, but decides against it- by way of protecting her reputation. More irony. Mary C.'s cousin Eliza is boarding at the Sanders house and makes a nuisance of herself daily. Arminius Scobie's roof collapsed under the last snow because he was too mean to fix it; his wife has a broken arm from the falling beams and shivers in bitter silence and tries to mend stockings with the one hand and her teeth. Much merriment over this fact at the rose-pinching until Caroline Scobie stormed out, face livid, wet streaks seeping from either nostril. Miss Taylor at the Shoppe has been unceremoniously "cut out" from the St. John's church bazaar planning committee because Mrs. Ball found that she had permitted _The Quick or the Dead? _to pollute her shelves, wherupon a secret meeting was convened at which Mrs. Dutton solemnly allowed she had attempted to read the first two chapters of said tome and felt herself thoroughly debased by the experience. Mrs. Tolliver has taken Miss Taylor's side, but to no avail - predictably enough, I should add.

There was a thaw two days ago but it all froze again, froze the few buds white on the trees. Their branches are black scars on the sky and the harbor ice is cracking, cracking as though the world would end. If only I could go away! There's no life here but a pigeon's life, a dull dowdy cooing and pecking existence. _Silly Evelyn_, you say- and why should you be such a smug and knowing traitor today, Diary, when I count on you to nod and knit your brows in sympathy - _do you really believe it would be any better in Vancouver- where you would be thousands of miles from your friends, and just as restless and ugly inside?_

Perhaps not. But what a relief it might be to go among strangers - to speak as a stranger to _anyone_ who doesn't imagine they know you and your family from the inside out! And perhaps there would be opportunities there - a real newspaper, a new magazine eager for help, a bookstore not vulnerable to the clucks and sqwaks of old biddies - but there, you know as well as I do I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know what to want or what to hope for. No, I don't really want to go to Vancouver, or Halifax or Boston, and be an ignorant country girl adrift. I would rather stay here and feel aloof and superior. How mean it looks when I set it down! Yet it is the truth.

Still, it is not the _only _truth. I'm afraid of the world, to be sure, but still- still- I _know _I can't possibly stay here if I want to be anything _really_. And I think I can be. I think - don't laugh at me, Diary! that I _have _to be. Yet all I do is talk, talk, talk about it - never anything more. Because I am afraid! Of what? Everything shattering, humiliation, untruth. No, this won't do at all. This isn't anything, Diary. This isn't even a lie. Poor patient you. I don't know how to say anything. A fine predicament for a would-be writer! Yet if I ever managed to say what I _really _felt, who would suffer me to darken the virtuous bookshelves of Shrewsbury?

All around me are the cold waves and the rocks, and the skeleton trees like twisted corpses, the barren spruces and the plaster-and-tonic ads all down Prince Street, the snow and slush streaked gory with red clay and the harbor ice cracking horribly beyond everything.

I feel like the sea under the ice, terrible and helpless.

Dear God, what a hideous creature Spring is!


	60. April 30, 1904: Tongueless Gossip

**Friday, April 30, 1904**

_Cynthia _is dead. I suppose that deserves a note. I gave my notice to Mr. Towers this afternoon. Towers raged and sneered and scoffed and called me a spoiled, petulant little fool who didn't deserve a fraction of the talent God had given me- but he didn't ask why. I suppose _why _doesn't matter. He will get one of the proof-readers to write the same columns with no change in salary, and save a little money by it, so it's his gain really.

A funny story. Last Friday's speaker at the Literary was a "graphologist," a student of the personality and its disorders as revealed through handwriting- red-and-liver-coloured barrel-bellied dwarf of a man with a moustache the size of my head. May, Kath Darcy, Paul and I were all shuffled up to write a false phrase on cards and have ourselves analyzed. Behold, my soul:

_Evelyn B., 17. Forward-slanting letters and open loops denote an extroverted personality, bright but not over-intellectual. Sharp lance-like t-cross indicates a highly analytical nature, while truncations in y and g loops show a greater than usual self-control. The subject's intelligence, gregariousness, and emotional equilibrium would suit her excellently for a career in teaching. Subject would make ideal minister's wife or club president. _

Truly we are strangers to ourselves!

May, meanwhile, learned that she was "somewhat emotionally stunted" and "gifted with an unusual manual dexterity," while Kath Darcy learned that, despite a hitherto un-noticed by anyone gift for music, her true calling lay in the household arts.

Otherwise, there is nothing to say. I have a poem in April's _Quill_, but it's nothing of me- an old one brushed shiny, a little glistening grammar-school ornament sullied by neither blood nor soul nor living breath. As such, Paul Laird, Scoville, and Miss Alymer have all declared it the best thing I've ever written. Truly. . . and so on.

Do you note, Diary, poor mutilated dear Diary, some pages have been torn out for the simple reason that it's better that way. I ought to be sorry for that, but I'm not. You would know if you knew. Poor Diary! Spring is here, frowsy, pungent, filthy Spring with its murky girl-brain full of brutish parlor songs and whispering rhymes. All is red mud and birdsong and ghastly Prep poetry on non-native flora. C. Perkins writes from Dalhousie, but I haven't the heart. Tom writes demanding to know how I am and why I haven't written, in typical Tom-fashion, but how can I tell him that I am no way at all, my poor tongueless gossip? White fog and the names of months in black - that's how I am.


	61. June 15, 1904: Gibberish

**Tuesday, June 15, 1904**

It's over. Now-

Failed to-day's exam (History of Canada)

-perhaps.

It's possible. I wrote _something_. made some marks perhaps words, wordish. No matter.

.

.

Mary, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

.

THIS BOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF MISS MARY E. CARSWELL

.

IF FOUND, PLEASE DELIVER TO

Miss Mary Carswell

c/o Mrs. Thomas R. Adamson

31B E. Prince St., Shrewsbury, PEI

.

Dear Mary,

I am leaving you my diary, to preserve or destroy. It is my hope you will not destroy it, but rather keep it but if you do I will understand. If anything I have written here is hurtful

I can no longer

I know that I owe you an explanation for what happened to-day.

I can no longer pretend that which I have heretofore I cannot pretend to be what none of this makes sense do not forgive me that is, I do not ask to be forgiven but I would like to be nevertheless gibberish what is this gibberish

I can't

.

.

Dear Mary,

It's not your fault.

Love always, Evelyn Blake


	62. June 28, 1904: Don't Worry

Miss Irene Winthrop

Smythe House, L.C., Dalhousie

14 South St., Halifax, NS

.

June 28, 1904

.

Dear Irene,

Well, you can see for yourself I haven't drowned myself in the harbor in the_ least_, or any such nonsense, so for heaven's sake, _cease worrying this instant_ and tell your room-mates, and that ridiculous Tom Blake, and anyone else who may have made themselves needlessly curious about my fate to do the same. Really, you mustn't take Mary Carswell's word on _anything_, and if I hadn't thought you knew as much, I would have written sooner, you poor gullible thing. Mary's a dear soul and all, but she _will _exaggerate, as you must know. In any event, I'm just precisely as hale and healthy as ever and like to remain so, so sigh no more, ladies.

I _am _sorry to have gone so long without writing. I've no excuse, truly, except that this past year I've been so doggedly lonely that I finally lost the will to scramble _out_ of it- _you _know what that's like, don't you, dear? Or do you? I never_ can_ quite sort out what's the universal lot of fallen humanity and what my own particular curse. But never mind! Only _don't _tell Mary I used the word "lonely;" she'll only feel guilty and _cry, _and I can't stand to see her poor face spoiled so- she really has a _wretched_ complexion when she cries, you know; I can't bear it at all. She's a lovely girl enough when she's cheerful, but she _will _get blotchy and let her nose run. And she won't understand _why _I'm lonely. It's nothing to do with _her,_ poor thing. It's only a sort of perennial inborn blackness of the gut- the fabled Blake sourness bobbing to the surface whether I will it or no.

It _is _true that I failed an exam. Ai, me! _Mea maxima culpa_! Indeed, I failed four out of the seven. Yes, your own Evelyn! Can you imagine? Well, truth be told, I failed the first, slept through the second and simply declined to get out of bed for the last two. You may well wonder "what I was thinking;" I haven't the slightest idea myself! But it's no great thing, really. I suppose I'll feel a good bit worse when the results are printed, but _you _mustn't, my darling. I'll put this in the post now, trusty and well-beloved, so you will get it sooner, but really, darling, you mustn't worry about me _ever again for any reason_! Or I shall be quite, quite angry, precious poor dear!

_Mille bises,_

Your ever-loving

Evelyn

PS. I swear by the holy hosts that I _shall_ write you a good long gabby letter in a moment, dear, I _do,_ only I simply can't _right away, _but I will in a day or two, I _promise. MB, E.S.B._


	63. June 28, 1904: Present and Future

**Tuesday, June 28, 1904**

Terribly tired and hollow-feeling and _dead_. Exam results to be printed Monday, but have already spoken to Father and Dr. Hardy; I know I've failed four of the exams, and will have to take the year over. I suppose there will be a good deal of talk when the results come out, but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters now except that it be _over _once and for all.

Old Belle Glass of Wiltney is to be married this week-end- to an amiable ugly old widower with two grown deaf-mute children, away in S'Side. Either he has escaped knowing her past or doesn't care too keenly for the morals of his unpaid help - for that is all there is to the arrangement, or so it is assumed, Belle being over sixty and not too remarkably well-preserved. What remains of the Glass family rather regard this marrying-off as a triumph, and half the Shore- _still,_ after nigh on forty years! as a disgrace. How _she _sees it, I can't wonder. For forty years Belle Glass has been a byword for sin and shame and wretchedness, and none of the hired girls would stay in her house, even after the little boy was grown up and married off somewhere far to the West, and in all that time has anyone asked her what she thought- how it came to be and _why_? No, _why _and _how _don't matter.

I've lain on my bed for the better part of a week, wishing some wind would come and sweep me a year hence. Yesterday and to-day there were worried letters from Tom and Irene and Sarah Geordie, and I had to write them all to say I was alive and well - when really I am dead and gutted- but there is no way to say such a thing, and it would be thoughtless- selfish to say it, anyway. It was Mary's fault; I said some rash things to her in confidence when I was still in rather a bad state and out of concern for my well-being she has made life a little harder for me than it should have been. But that is nothing too terrible. In a way it was lucky that I failed my exams, for it gives me a ready excuse to be "low" and perhaps no one will think too deeply about it; I don't know; I don't know what I can hope for or expect.

May Hilson has been engaged to Lou Mitchell for a month. It came up so suddenly we _all _thought ill of her at first, but it seems they are to be engaged for at least a year yet while he finishes his training. I was told to-day I am to be one of the bridesmaids - so perhaps I really have escaped ruin. Ha, ha.

Why should my heart be pounding? I should be an empty husk by now. I have treaded water in this for nearly three months, and now - I don't believe I shall ever be anything but tired again. "You're missing summer," Mary scolds me - gently, for she thinks I am a delicate thing, but a scold just the same. Oh, Mary, Mary, what have you not had to forgive me? Poor, prim shivering Mary walked me back to History exam from the washroom, and not one word of question or rebuke, and I could feel their eyes on me when I sat down again, so that it seemed they could see right through to the worst of me, the worst of all the true things I have hidden. After that I may as well have gone home, but I stayed and wrote - something. Four pages and a half - and none of my thoughts were worthy of the name. I was only spinning, only the hot horrible coppery smell still on my fingers, and the queasy, abominable _relief _and the hard stares of everyone in the world. Mary walked home with me- followed me, thought I didn't want her- and knew_ something, _though I can't imagine what. I don't know if I was glad or not that she stayed with me. No, I was glad. It is better to be alive, whatever happens. I can say that now and _mean it_, I think.

It's no use. I thought I could write it out and be _purged,_ but I cannot. Last night I tried to put some of it down, and tore up six pages, and went down in the corner of the room in a blind panic. Yes, your delicate flower, sensitive, _self-righteous I, _I could not bear to look on even the perimiter of what I had done, in what wild inexplicable mood. And what of you- Mary, or whoever will one day read this - whatever great-granddaughter or middle-aged cousin will come absurdly dressed to rifle through my musty things on some day I can't imagine- what can I possibly tell you that you might understand, and not be merely disgusted and angry and ashamed? I don't know who you are or what I am to you - did I give you maple candies and make fun of your little suitors? Did your parents shush you when you spoke to me in slang? I will have been wrong about you, I fear, as you must be inevitably wrong about me. And selfishly, stupidly, I would have you know what I am _really- _I would choke you with truth if I could, poor thing, and snare you to the ground with it. If I could. But I cannot; I would have to face it myself, then. And yet I _know_ it will hammer at me forever, and nothing I can do will rid me of it. Can you pity me, whoever you are? I was- am wrong- am wrong still- and there is no one in the world to talk to or confide in, and I am . . . I wish I knew a better way to say that I am altogether wretched.

This writing does no good. I need to sleep another month or so. Only _then_ I dream, and that is no better. I cannot even read my books - everything is stained. Everything has new horrible meanings, and mocks or rebukes me. All I can do now is sleep and write letters full of lies, and sleep again, and try to forget.

Would it be better or worse if I had a mother?

I don't know the answer.


	64. July 11, 1904: Kitten

**Monday July 11, 1904**

Well, Evelyn, you claimed to want to continue in your education, didn't you. . .

So said Father, here and gone this last week, with sad little chuckle and sad crinkled eyes. And now you can- that is the punch-line, I suppose. Who's the wag who said we always feel the most violent hatred toward those we've hurt the most? I could have killed him where he stood. Ev the Ripper. What happened, Evie? He was all indignation at Hardy and Alymer; wanted to drag me to Dr. Burnley and petition for a re-take on medical grounds, but Mrs. Halloran and I stopped him. Did he _see _then? Or only apprehend the risk of it, as though narrowing his eyes in the dark to keep the shadows from moving?

I don't know.

They are gone now and back home- heading toward the darkness to Vancouver. I guess they are traveling across the prairies by now. I am glad they are gone. The look on his face when we stopped him shouting at Dr. Hardy was unbearable- a flicker of shame and knowledge, tamped down and buried in an instant, but enough. I cannot- there is no way to fix or change it. And his wife is cold and wary of me now - for what does she know of it? As far as she knows she has unknowingly married into a family of lunatics. And indeed the elder Blakes, and poor pinch-wristed, fluttering Aunt Dan, had some talk of a "specialist" in Halifax - to much rage and bluster from Father, who will have none of such implications. He at least will keep me out of - for no Blake ever suffered from so declasse a malady as _mental imbalance_, however unattractively they may behave while in full control of their faculties.

And yet when I think of the fierce unhappy giddiness that comes on me at times I wonder if there are words enough for all the myriad ways one can be broken. I wish there were a way to explain- without it sounding mad- how very little I understand my actions of the past year. I thought it all had a dreadful logic at the time, and everything seemed necessary and poignant and _absolute__._ And now all of that has vanished, and seems at least wholly irrecoverable. But now I am only being dramatic, when I promised myself I _wouldn't_ any more.

There! I have shaken it off.

In the end there was no great penalty, no retribution. A half-dozen scholars fail every year, with one or another excuse or with none, and it "makes talk" for a month or a year with no lasting effects. I'm to take Senior year over, and relinquish editorship of the _Quill _in order to accommodate the incoming class. However, I am permitted to retain normal membership in the S&O, provided my conduct remains impeccable.

Irony, if you please.

Tom came back from Halifax this week-end and saved me from my misery simply by being here and being Tom. He is as merry and priggish and Tom-like as ever, though his manner of speaking is subdued. He brought me a gift- a tiny grey-and-white kitten he carried wrapped in his jacket across the water - a long-bodied, languid, utterly disdainful thing. "Of course, _I _would have called her Evelyn," he said, "but you'll likely find that too confusing." Someone had dumped her by the docks in a sack not even tied- some careless and cruel mortal enemy who is my unknown benefactor. He and one of his college friends got her out just before they boarded the ferry, and the poor thing rather spoiled the woolen jacket they drew out to bunde her in and mewed pathetically all the way to Stovepipe Town as the ferry pitched and swayed. He had meant to keep her a secret until after dinner, but he couldn't, of course- there was nowhere to put her. We bathed and fed her and teased her with packing twine and pinfeathers.

She is with me in my room as I write, and Mrs. Halloran may moan and mutter all she likes, but the catlet is mine. She is perched very impractially on my lap now, all of her meager weight settled on one of my legs as she stretches out into the thin air, like a very small lion. Now she has hooked her tiny chin against my knee and closed her eyes most adorably in a drowsy, contented squint. And before this she was pleased to stalk on tip-toe right across my letter to Sarah Geordie- which was beneficial in itself, in that it gave me something novel and humorous to write about.

She is to be a mother, I suppose - no, know. Her letter came Friday full of sweetness and guarded fear, and little pointed stories of Eamon and his family. But why should she choose to confide in_ me _at all? Have I ever shown her the slightest encouragement or understanding? No; since we were children she has been utterly confused by me and I by her. We haven't even the most banal shared history of party games and schoolyard jokes to fall back on - nothing but ephemeral slivers of blood and place. I don't know how to reply to her, or how even to acknowledge her worries, and to read them hurts my head and throat and lungs as though something were burning near me. But I must write and so I do, with a stiff, glossy friendliness that feels written by an automaton. Yet she seems to believe I will do her some good by answering.

I haven't yet given my kitten a name. It seems to me a serious mistake to saddle an intelligent fellow-creature with a name that might not suit it. So I am waiting until I know the right name. Until then, she is Catlet or Kitten - or Mighty Hunter, or Little Grey Cat I have spent a happy hour, or nearly so, watching her clamber at the bed-post, and fall into a fierce battle with the old John heirloom quilt's red and white threads - she is wholly alive and alert and kittenish and _real_. It is good to feel like a living person again, and not a sorry shade or a long black howl or a dreary metaphor. I have real hands and a face - I know, because I just lifted my kitten to lean my head against her fur. I have a heart and lungs like hers, and feet in stockings on the warped wooden floor, and everything in my room has already been kitten-tested and found fascinating in the extreme.

I cannot call it providence that she lived or that Tom found her, or anything to do with _me _at all. It is only coincidence. Yet that she is _alive _is a good thing, and that she is alive and _mine_, another - of course, to the catlet, good has nothing to do with whether a strange tall girl-person near to her is happy or not, but by chance our happy outcome is the same.

Saw Ilse hiking back from the shore this Friday with that feathery and gaseous hanger-on of hers. The latter shot me _quite_ the Murray pucker on their way past, for no earthly reason I can fathom; the former only hunched sheepishly or angrily forward and glanced in the other direction. And why should it be any different? Yet it is hard to have lost her friendship so completely and so without cause. If I had been able to talk to Ilse- or to anyone jolly and sensible- or if I had not been too bewildered and ashamed to talk to anyone at all but _you_, Diary, I _know _it would have been different. I should have heard at once how strange and reckless my thoughts were, and should not have felt so trapped and frantic as I did then.

But there is no sense in imagining what _should_ have been, if I were good and other than myself. I might as well say, "If I were Tom," or "if I were Jane Eyre."

There is "talk," of course, now that the exam results have gone out. I guess the Cyrillas and Wallaces are especially adamant that they all- collectively and in turn- "always said that Evelyn Blake had more airs than brains, that's what." And of course the Blakes have never been nearly as clever as they pretend, if you ask any one of a hundred goodwives- though why one _should _is beyond me. Oh, it doesn't matter! I am _glad _I failed exams- _glad _to have such a bright light of harmless failure to go before me and blind everyone. I don't _mind _that I should be stupid and vain and pitiable in the eyes of Greater Shrews., for I _know _I am not stupid and "vain" is only a bitter way of saying "well-dressed." As for being pitiable-

No, this will only make me break my promise.

I mean to keep a real diary from now on, with the weather and everything. Today was fine with some wind, and muddy still. Perhaps not_ the weather _exactly. But I am going tomake an honest attempt to record something _other _than how unhappy I am. And perhaps I am not so very unhappy today as I was a little while ago.

Now my catlet has leaped from my lap to pounce on a shadow- some scurrying in the baseboards or the semblance of it. One cannot forget- I forgot for a time, I think, that I live in a body, and that it ___means _something, peculiar as it may sound. A cat would never forget such a thing. Now she has run away to the bed, from whose great height she casts a wary eye on the north wall, and on the moving shadows of the tree outside my window, my guard and sentinel. And that is the only thing of any _real _importance on this summer evening or in all the summer days to come.


	65. July, 1904: A Plain Record

_Our lives are Swiss-  
So still, so cool,  
Till, some odd afternoon,  
The Alps neglect thier curtains,  
And we look farther on_

******Tuesday, July 12 1904**

I have resolved that I am going to give up the sort of perpetual complaint that has lately been masquerading as a diary and give a plain record of my day and the news. So, here is my record. I was ill in the morning but better toward afternoon. Missed bathing with May and Kate. Kate is leaving for Charolottetown soon to work in her aunt Pearson's shop. Kate sang Patience for our song-concert this spring and made everyone love her; she could have a true career if she had any courage or _spine_. That sounds unkind, and perhaps it is. I mean she never will attempt anything she is not guaranteed to triumph in- will never sing, for example, unless everyone around her _begs _that she should and promises to cheer wildly afterward. She will squander all her gifts on not looking foolish - as I will mine on passing judgment, I suppose.

The Shamrock Lacrosse team took the gold in the Olympic games at St. Louis. Minnie McPhail had a picnic Saturday to celebrate the victory. The Mohawk Indians placed third - a good showing for Canada, all told. Mrs. Halloran's son is in town from Chicago and very brash and Yankeeish in his manner. He works for the railroad there. I hung in the kitchen for nearly an hour listening to him talk about the city. He is a tall straw-legged toothish fellow, with a face comically identical to my good lady's, and must have thought me a green stupid thing indeed, for all my gawking and blinking at his tales. Mrs. Halloran scowled at my talking to him. I suppose she thought I was "flirting." She has given up scolding and taken to heaving deep sighs whenever I come near. That is not a complaint, but an observation.

The weather continues fine. There was a bright fresh wind kicking around the treetops this afternoon, and much cooler after sunset, clear stars over the inky branches now. Mrs. Halloran wants to set me at quilting again, but I'll have none of it. I put my window open and was roundly sighed at for it. Began to read Mrs. Chopin's novel but couldn't finish. Am reading William Morris instead.

Ilse is back home in Blair Water, and Mary in St. Clair. Soon there will be no one left in town but May and Anita Ball - pitiful thought. Need I mention the potato-carts for posterity's sake? _Can_ there be a future in which potato-carts are sufficiently novel to bear mentioning? To-day the farmers have begun to haul them to the harbor to be shipped around the contient, and the harvest will hardly end until winter. All the Frenchmen from around Malpeque and down-county come through to lift and haul. I used to practice my French on them, but it gave me a dreadful accent and all the Blakes great and small made cracks about my "low tastes."

Burned two pies to-day on Morris' account, and while inwardly criticizing his tale, no less. Shocking lack of remorse.

******Wednesday, July 14, 1904**

Rain, of the hammering kind, from late last night onward. The roads are all awash. Tom was supposed to drive me to Mary's for the afternoon, but wouldn't go because of the roads. Simply slouched about all day reading and teasing the kitten. She is wholly enamored with my black school tie of last year - though hers is a rending and gnawing sort of love. I have only to twitch it a little and she falls on it with all four paws, tumbling and scrambling. The rain stopped about four-thirty in the afternoon and everything was very quiet.

I spent half an hour planning to turn the above into a _Cynthia _column, before I remembered I was no longer writing them. Supposed to have gone to the Literary with Paul Laird, but begged off with a false ailment. Mrs. Katherine Fengold MacLester of Toronto spoke on "The Role of the Canadian Woman in the New Century." Only I didn't much feel like being told my destiny in a lot of bronzey martial metaphors, and anyway I have to watch the kitten to be sure she doesn't leave any more messes in the kitchen - my only role for the foreseeable future. Halloran threatenes to sweep Kitten out of the house if she finds another puddle, but I don't think she will. Kitten will win her over where I can't. Paul was disappointed and went alone. I _ought_ to have gone, in the general moral sense, but I didn't want to and that's that.

Miss Alymer is ill, or that is the rumour - "nervous prostration." I don't know for sure. She has gone to Charlottetown for the rest. Kate's sister is with her, though for good or ill I don't know either.

No doubt there is more to record of our fair settlement, but I am too tired to think of it.

******Thursday, July 15, 1904**

Hot and damp. Roads still bad, but recovering. Neil Priest walked me home from prayer-meeting. I didn't ask him to, or even consent. He simply _followed _me home like a loose-boned species of hairless dog. I haven't any use at all for Neil Priest, but I did permit him to tell me about his globe-trotting cousin Dean, returned from his wanderings to. . .

Well, i' truth, Neil told me a shocking thing, and honestly I don't know whether to beleive it or not- that Dean Priest is _courting __Emily Starr!_ I wonder if it is true. Certainly they are equally smug and self-satisfied. Perhaps it is a good match. Perhaps the world is really just. . . oh, what do I know! Father himself married a girl barely older than I am, and I- and the Priests _will _demand the best for themselves- the Priest men, I mean- and I suppose a "fresh" girl is among the things- the _best _things one can get or claim or demand. I don't know! I suppose all this sounds dreadfully naive_. _When I was nine or ten a girl of sixteen was "grown," and that she should marry a man of forty- or older- well, that was the order of things, and _quite romantic _besides. Now. . .

I can't help but feel they mean to take some advantage of our ignorance, and that there is something- not very pleasant or kind in it. Even _good _men, perhaps, and there's no guarantee of a Dean Priest being _that_. Even _Father_. . .

. . .but I won't think it. What good is it to anyone? Nothing is going to change, and I have everything mixed-up anyway.

I suppose Neil Priest thought to make me jealous, or curious, or caught up in a general fervor of Priestly amorousness. And of course he referred to E.B.S. as "your friend, Emily," as everyone _will_. They really are a stupid clan for all their surfeit of BAs. Dean is supposed to be clever enough, put perhaps it's only that he scavenges words and stories from around the world instead of farming the same old stony patch of the Maritimes. Well, having the sense to get out of here is a kind of cleverness. Perhaps he only keeps coming _back _because he can't seem nearly as clever anywhere else.

Mrs. Hadley Lewis came to prayer meeting with a black eye. If she hadn't wanted to world to see it, she'd have stayed home. Yet all of Shrews. will mind its own business while it carries hers far and wide.

The garden here is overrun, brambly and hideous with live-forever. When I was little I liked to "putter" in the garden with Halloran and her hired girl, and pretend to be a farmer-maid, but no more. It was Elder Forsyth leading prayer-meeting tonight, and a flimsier more worm-eaten crop of prayers could hardly be imagined. I am sorry I didn't just stay at home and finish _The Well at the World's End_.

******Friday, July 16, 1904**

May helped her stepmother chloroform two kittens yesterday. To-day she tried to tell it as a comic tale, but I couldn't laugh. She was peevish and sullen because I didn't laugh. May is full of airy plans for her wedding- - four bridesmaids! Lace and silk! Crystal and china! I let her move my hair around in anticipation, and stick pins in it. Lou's family has a little money and a great deal of. . . cussedness. She hardly talks of _him _at all. I _think_ Lou's sisters will be rather happier to make her life a misery than otherwise but to say as much is proof of my jealousy. Her eyes are stuck on the little spot of diamond he gave her- well. I hope she'll be happy. I don't know what to say about it.

Lila brought my mail over and sat in the parlor more out of obligation than anything. I had a letter from Livia and a book from Irene. I never saw one like her for sending books. Thomas Stewart's _Pome Pantheon_, a very odd little book indeed. It is "avant-garde," I suppose, and full of line drawings in the "aesthetic" fashion. The "Pomes" are largely stacks of cryptic declarative statements about the thoughts of the dead, and various household objects, and veiled body parts masquerading as flowers. It is quite un-_Quill_worthy but weirdly compelling. I should like to ask him what he meant by them. "Isn't this the sort of thing you like?" she writes, along with the requisite joke about the _Quill _selection process. Well, it_ isn't_ exactly, but in a few months it _might _be.

I think perhaps I will be an old maid after all. I haven't the . . .stamina for anything else. The normal human relations are exhausting to me. I shall live in a corner of some barely-tolerant relative's parlor with my cat and cap, and scribble silly romances which my younger cousins will read in a half-asleep daze out of some poorly understood sense of obligation. That seems to me a reasonable sort of life. . . for me. I think I can eke out some kind of living even if I am not rich. But perhaps I am only a silly child yet, and don't know what I'm talking about. Wish I may, wish I might. I would _like _to write now but when I set myself to it all seems fruitless and foolish. The moment I pick up my pen, I think, "Well, what good is this?" and all my thoughts dry up. Only when I get up and go out or try to sleep I fill up with voices like a cistern in a storm. Then back to the desk where blankness rears up again. It is all rather a waste of time and ink and heart-beats.

Yet I feel I _ought _to try, sooner or later. I have to go on living, and so I might as well do something in the meantime. The weather is - night, now. I think it was grey when there was light. Tom is gone and took the trap with him, but I mean to walk to St. Clair to-morrow whether it rains or no.

******Sunday. July 17, 1904**

_10 AM, St. Clair_

Well, it didn't rain! With Mary in St. C.; we are going blackberrying in a moment. It was an adventure getting here (sufficient adventure to set up my own lecture tour, says Mary C.: Tramps Across Alien Fields: A Sentimental Journey, by Miss E. Stella Blake, Shrewsbury, PEI: A Cautionary Tale for Young Ladies). Really, it's not so exciting as all that. The true tale must wait though, till after - it's sunny and buzzing and blistery-warm, but no matter.


	66. July 20, 1904: A Little Adventure

******Wednesday, July 20 1904**

Well, I said that I would write up my Saint Clair adventure, and I suppose I must keep my promise. I set off late Saturday morning down Prince Street to the old Western Road on the edge of town, jaunty as you please, fully expecting to swallow up the next twelve miles in my stride and meet the Winters and Mary for lunch. There was a dew on everything. I stomped right down the hill to the big Westen Road, squishing the red mud with my feet as though I were ten years old and barefoot. I nearly _skipped_. Diary, I ___did _skip - and barely escaped falling flat in the road and twisting my ankle. Never mind trying that again! But I was in high spirits, and quite confident that even with dawdling and sitting down by the woods to write, I would make it to the Winters' in good time.

Alas, it was not to be. I have no one to blame but _myself, _Diary, for in the next few hours I made nothing but rash and irrational choices and nearly got myself into real trouble. Perhaps a little less than half-way to St. C. on the road, I heard the far sound of hooves behind me. I froze- though without knowing why- and turned to see who was coming. My heart sank before I knew who it was. Then my ___mind_ caught up with my ___instincts_and I saw- - by the shape of the cart and the slump of its driver, for it was far up the road- - that it was the old pedlar Kelley, a foul-minded old nuisance who regards all attempts _not _to speak with him as "coyness," and any answer to his inane questioning as open flirtation. May has stories that are worse, though I don't know if they are true or not- but I _did _know I didn't at all relish the thought of having to speak to or ignore him for any amount of time. while he went on about which parts of me he finds admirable and whether I'll be marrying soon. He hadn't seen me- or if he had, it was only in silouhette - but all I could think to do was turn round and go back the other way, so as to avoid the opportunity of his following aloing after me. But luck pervailed- or so I thought- in a little streak of a footpath bending down the ridge and into the woods. _Lucky! _I thought. So into the grass and down the hill I went, and hid myself among the black Malvern trees- meaning to follow close to the road until he was well out of sight and earshot.

I walked that way for an hour or so- - I don't suppose I need to go into raptures over green light and grey bark, or anything like that, but it was peaceful, and my thoughts drifted, and I suppose I felt _content_, as I haven't for- oh! a very long time! Perhaps before you were my diary, Diary. . . ages and ages ago. And I had thought that I never _could _be again. So, all rhapsodies to one side- for you will either know what it is to feel _lifted _into the bright world after a seeming century of shadow, or you will not, and no skill of mine can make it otherwise- I went along for quite a bit longer than I meant to, and ceased entirely to listen for hoof-beats or humming or any sighn of the road, and when I came out of the woods, the Western Road had gone entirely, and there was the sodden green-and-slate Hardscrabble valley before me, and the far peak of Indian Head beyond.

It was the same forlorn valley I passed with M. when we came out of the woods and turned north again to the shore, when we first went riding a lifetime ago. I recognized it with such a pang as nearly felled me, so that I could have lain on the ground and wept, if feeling and action were the same. I remember writing in this very journal, "I wanted to be in love_." _I thought I was being candid then. _Then _it had been all misty and moonlit, like a faint sad song I didn't understand, but now the sun was full upon it and it was only a bare ugly settlement of warping farm-houses, exactly like any other and a good deal dirtier than some.

More to the point, I had come some four miles off-course without knowing it! I hadn't a clear idea of the roads between Hardscabble and St. C. to set off across country, and I didn't want to go down into Hardscrabble. So I did another foolish thing: I went back into the woods and tried to re-trace my path, and ended up coming out on the ridge of the same valley, and further than Saint Clair than before- or so it seemed; in truth I had lost my bearings entirely.

By that time it was beginning to be late afternoon and my legs felt as though they were about to drop off, so I simply slogged down the hill into Hardscabble and hoped for the best. I thought I could knock on some door and ask directions- but the houses were so little and closed and far from the road I couldn't bring myself to go up the path. No one was out but a few grubby children, until I came to M.'s old house by a sparkling, soapy, rainbow-resiny branch of Hunter Creek.

The Ordes have all left- - I don't know if I've mentioned that here. They've been gone since mid-May- - Reid to work in an office somewhere in Toronto, and Marshall with him, "good opportunities," he told me. "if there's nothing for me here,"___if._ . . and their mother has gone off to live with her youngest daughter in Bideford. The house where they once lived is a little grey box with firewood all over the year and a tin chimney. I expected to see it shuttered and close like all the others, but instead stumbled into a flock of anxious, scraggly chickens pecking about in the road, and the little windows wide open, with bits of underwear hanging off the shutters. A fat Irish woman was in the yard, bright red and bare-armed, singing through the laundry like something in a story. When she caught me looking she stopped dead and gave me a look more pitiless that I could have expected from so plain a face. I tried to ask directions but my voice was gone, and everything sounded strange and far away in my throat. Soon she huffed and turned back to her laundry. The other doors were shut or far away down disheveled lanes, and I felt black as the pit to have come there at all, never mind alone and lost.

At last I came by a very old woman sitting alone in the yard of a house who was willing to let me prevail on her for directions- - willing enough in spirit, but in flesh quite deaf. We had some comical interchange, together with much angry yapping and growling on the part of her small filthy dog, until a young man came upon us- - sallow, side-stooped and clogged with phlegm like half of Hardscrabble- and pointed out the way back to the Western Road. The old woman greeted him with a mouthful of gums and was instantly a thousand times more at ease, but he stood straight up and gave me the same hard gaze the Irish woman had.

"_Thank_ you," I said, as haughtily as I could. But haughtiness might do me some small favors in Shrewsbury; it had no power here.

"You're Marshall's girl," he said accusingly. I won't attempt to replicate his manner of speaking. He slurred so badly I thought he was speaking French. Perhaps he half-was; I don't know.

I collected myself as best I could.

"I don't believe so."

He flattened his mouth at me. I walked off quickly before he could say any more- - up the hill and back toward the old Western Road, not a little shaken. I must have walked half a mile before I dared look behind me- no one. Yet that was no comfort, and less still after nightfall. I was _alone _and that was a relief. . . but _I was ____alone _and every sound in the black woods made me jump. I could not have told you how I made it to the Winter farmhouse. in something close to blind panic- - and when I reached it at last I felt my heart would never stop pounding, though I was back inside four walls again.

In the end I was nearly six hours late, and Mary had gone out with Mr. Winter in the buggy to look for me. Mrs. Leda Winter was none too happy with me. She thumped down a pot of tea and told me Mary had gone out with Leslie to search for me. "Fine lot of trouble you've made," she said. But there was nothing to do but send the hired boy out running after them- and she wouldn't. "They'll come back of their own," she said. "No sense getting _everyone _lost in the woods."

Of course, I should never have gone down into the valley- should have spent the night in the woods, rather, and been found by Mary and her cousin's husband shivering among the birches. All the contentment of the morning was broken to pieces like a lot of dry sticks. But I was so glad to be indoors and _safe _that I barely understood she was angry. It just drifted above me like clouds above a fish. There was cold meat pie and doughnuts and as I have never mastered the ladylike trick of losing appetite during times of stress, I ate rather more heartily than pleased Cousin Leda _nee _Carswell.

The latter went to bed after a little while and and I sat up with the lamp and the draggled kitchen cats, and could neither write nor _think _in a straight line until the door shook and opened and Mary came in. Her face was flaming and she was nearly wrecked with coughing. My first thought was that I was angry with her for going out into the night - in such a thin coat, with her lungs- but she shrieked with joy and squeezed the air out of me before I could scold her. "How did you come so late?" she said. "We thought you were lost! We thought-" and coughed so hard I thought she would crack a rib. "No, don't worry, it's not contagious!" she said. "How long have you been here? Well, never mind, you must want to sleep."

As we got ready for bed, I told her nearly all of what had happened, and she turned out the light so that the room was nearly black, with only the white sliver of a moon leaking fitfully through the slats. She turned flat on her back under the mountains of red-and-white Island quilts and said, "You must have been a sight to the Hardscrabble Road people, with how you were got up. I suppose they thought you were some sort of government official and hid." I hadn't thought that I had dressed richly at all. "Oh, Ev, you always look as though you'd stepped out of a magazine," she said, yawning. "I used to be so jealous, really."

"_You _could look perfectly well, if. . ." I started to say- - then bit my tongue. Who was I to give Mary Carswell advice?

She yawned again and curled away from me.

"You should never be jealous of me," I said.

"I was, though. I am. You're so clever and interesting. I never was interesting. Sometimes I feel as though I've missed out on everything."

"You haven't," I said. And then my throat closed, and I couldn't say what I meant to say, which is that being clever has done me not one whit of good. . . and a great deal more besides- to much, I suppose, for poor Mary. I wanted to tell her everything. But I could not, of course. I could not even imagine a world in which I _could _tell her, or what sort of people we might be who lived in it, and I began to feel that I must have dreamed it all _really__, _or I would not be here at all, and so much the same. Then it seemed there was a huge black wall between us, and always would be, and however much she tried to reach through it she could not so much as touch it, and it would be like this forever. How could she be so wrong, who used to know me better than anyone? "You're wrong about me," I tried to say, but the words were all broken.

"Ev?" she said. "Are you all right?" Mary can never stand to see anyone crying, for good reason or bad. She crumples at the very _thought _of tears. "I'm sorry, Ev. I won't be jealous if you don't want me to be."

"It's been less than ten minutes," I said ruefully, "and I've already spoiled your night. Now you see why you mustn't think well of me."

She put her hand on my back. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

I shook my head. She lay beside me very still, and drew her fingers up against my bare neck. "I won't feel badly if you do tell me," she said. "But it's all right if you don't. I didn't mean to make you unhappy. I only meant that I . . I admire you, Ev. And I still will, whatever. Whatever happens."

She was wrong, of course, but I was grateful that she was wrong. After a little while she kissed my hair and turned away, and soon she was sleeping, with a dim childish smile in the dark. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to lay all- - I do not _believe _the word ___sins _and so I cannot write it, Diary- - in front of her, and I knew that if I told her she would shrink from me; she wouldn't mean to; she simply wouldn't be able to help it- I don't know who ___could_. In the end I think friendship on false pretenses is better than none at all. It is the only kind there _is _for me now.

I waited until she was asleep, and then I whispered - no, not even whispered; I only _thought _it, with my hand on her back, called it all to mind: the stupid jests and banter, the foolish night-rides; I tried to imagine a world in which I _could _tell her, out loud and in words, of the night in Poor Almira Shaw's house, before he left for good. It was the night of one of any of a thousand endless prating parties, and when we escaped it the earth was spinning beneath us, and we laughed over and made cheap philosophy of Poor Almira's mildewed scrapbooks. I haven't written of that night because. . .because there isn't any use in it, and I can't manage to, anyway. Because it is too humiliating, or too dear? I don't know; I don't want to know. Perhaps some day I will write it all out and seal it in an envelope, to have it out of me, and horrify my poor descendants properly. I meant to do that _here,_ but I can't, after all. All I could whisper in her ear, even sleeping, was a trite, "I loved him." And even_ that_ is suspect.

Then I tried to think of what she would say. I imagined her saying to me, in her shivery cautious way, "I don't think you're ___bad__, _Ev," and not meaning it. I think she will be relieved when we finally begin to grow apart. When I had run the gamut of my useless thoughts I tried to lie still and sleep, and listened to her feeble breathing with its whistling sound like wind in grass. She is weak, too weak, like chaff the wind blows away, and it felt a vicious injustice that we should have been born at all to such a vast indifferent world.

But that was night.

In the morning Cousin Leda was in a better humor, and Mary was full of eager plans. We did go blackberrying down between the farm-hedges, and stained our lips and fingers thoroughly, and completely spoiled a good apron and the sleeve of my old shirtwaist. Spoiled? No, put to good and proper use, rather! Half-way down the hill I felt compelled to pull off shoes and stockings and go barefoot And why not? We tucked our boots and stockings by the pasture fence, and ran back down-hill giddy as a pair of schoolgirls in the morning of the world. The blackberries were everywhere, too many even to make a dent in. When we had filled our pail and eaten more than our share we walked the long way around to the road back up the hill, where we picked great gobs of spruce gum and chewed it with our mouths open, both at the same time in perfect imitation of how Kevin Sitwell used to gnash his jaw in big idle circles- now ten years ago- - and this convergence of memory put us both in near-fits of laughter. When we came back to the house, Leda made us wash up outside, and then we ate an absurd number of pancakes with blackberries and cream. Mary wanted to go bathing in the river then, but Leda told her she was too "worked-up" and had to keep close to the house. Mary looked at me _beseechingly _and I offered that Dr. Burnley considers it healthy to spend as much time outdoors as possible."Allan _Burnley_!" scoffed Mrs. Carswell. "Didn't his wife run out on him, and his daughter grow up to be some kind of hoyden actress?" and Mary got so out-of-breath defending Ilse that it shut down all question of a bathing trip for the rest of the afternoon. It was as well; we spent the rest of the day looking at Mary's albums and talking of nothing. She is going to "help out" with one of her cousins in Blair Water when her baby is born in November, and beyond that has no plans. She never had plans but marriage, I think, and is a little bewildered that no proposals have come to her by the end of High School. And I have only been saved from drifting by my appalling performance at final exams. "Still it will be good to be useful," she says. And she will be nearby, and that is something.

In the evening, Leslie drove me home, and Mary came along to keep me company. He was in a cheerful mood and the night was warm and misty. Mary and I rode the whole way with our arms around each other, and as the end of the journey drew nearer we affected desperation and said very wry and affectionate good-byes, but in truth I was glad to be home and have the chance to be alone, and to _write_. When I squeezed Mary good-bye and jumped down from the buggy, I felt _freed - _and all the scraps and snarls of prose and verse that had been collecting and stagnating for two days seemed to clamor to be given shape. I heard Kitten mewing and scratching at the door when I put my hand on the latch, and when I opened the door she seemed to have grown in my absence, her face sharper, her big eyes more knowing. She knuckled her head against my boot and then turned round and padded away as if to scold me for leaving. I caught her and scooped her off the floor and was anchored again by her small life to the world.

Well! - you might say - _that i_s no adventure at all. Did I brave the jungles of the Congo or set off across Japan in a tweed suit? Was there the least risk at any point of sleeping sickness, tiger attack or armed rebellion? Not: it was nothing of the kind. If I were to hold the word "adventure" to its strictest standards I am afraid they would be rather hard to come by in our province. In plain fact I only went a little way from home and came back again- - and when I was home, rushed up-stairs to write about it as though it were important, as though it changed me. Perhaps it did a little. I find I am always wanting something to change me - waiting for some sign to tell me I have changed.

To-day I wrote out the story of my non-adventure and drank a cup of tea and then wrote it all out again here like a story, as though it were important. But who knows what will and will not be important? Today was bright and quiet, and though I did nothing all day but scribble and pace, something of the exhilaration and lightness I felt in the Malvern woods has returned, or been preserved, beyond all expectation: still fresh and faintly sweet in spite of the trouble it cost me.


	67. July 25, 1904: Unfinished Business

**Tuesday, July 25, 1904**

Livia came home for the week-end at long last, and acted very merry but guarded. I wonder what has happened to make her so estranged from the rest of us? Uncle Henry and Aunt Iz I can understand, but what have Lila or I ever done? Don't answer that, Diary. Anyway, we had a great deal of hollow chatter and gadding about and then she left again_, _with a kind of dusty silence in her wake. I miss her more than I ever expected to - - not for any one thing about her, but simply because she was always _there _and now barely thinks of us.

Aunt Iz has been rather better of late - now that I show no further signs of literary promise, she is almost kind to me. No, I will leave off the _almost_. She has been downright loyal, and fended off several unkind if more or less accurate rumours with her sharp tongue- - I suppose out of some conviction that they would reflect badly on _her._ But it is a welcome change, whatever the reason.

In the meantime, so many of the small details of life have piled up that it may seem best to ignore them altogether. I've known for over a week that I _must _wash my hair, yet I have put it off so long precisely because it is such a nuisance and a bother, and always comes out wrong. Well, we have a new tonic and maybe that will shock us all by behaving as advertised. May is going to come by and help, if she remembers- and if she doesn't I will put it off again until next week.

May has a bicycle now- a gift from her Mitchell suitor, I am told- and manages it well enough. I think I shall try to get one for myself after all. Frank Sitwell has made some snide remarks, but what of it? I wish Frank would cease trying to ingratiate himself with me by scolding all my friends. I suppose he imagines that because _I _scold them, I want everyone else to do the same. Well, he will have to live with disappointment. Of course he looks as much a fool on _his _wheel as Mary on hers; they are great levelers for looking ridiculous. I don't mind looking ridiculous if I can get around more easily. Only I _won't _wear a bifurcated skirt with wool bathing stockings and a hunting jacket! Even if I _am _set on old-maidhood, there's no need to start dressing the part ahead of time. May had a "velo suit" for a little while, but got so many jeers for it she sold it again, and now simply manages in her day-clothes, with no fatal effects so far.

There is another thing. Two weeks ago Mr. Calvin Perkins of Portland, ME, wrote me an uncharachteristically polite and halting letter in which he ventured that I might consider "sharing his life" at such a time in the future as was convenient for me. I know _ought _to have noted this in my diary but it was so much at odds with my emotional state that I couldn't figure out _how_, or it didn't seem real, or some such cliche. I wrote him back quickly, very briefly, to beg some time to think. Now I have to answer him for real- - he wants to know whether he should come to the Island. I _don't _want him here now- that's for certain!

It is an odd situation altogether. I may have expected such a thing of a Hilson or a Sitwell, but _never _of Cal P. - who has after all seen me _twice_, and only corresponded with me since the winter . . and who seemed sophisticated enough despite his awkward joking. I never _did _encourage his romantic tendencies, at first because I genuinely couldn't tell if he was serious or not, and later because I was pre-occupied; indeed, he is stupider than I imagined if he didn't notice how neglectful I was of him for the vast majority of our correspondance. Now I must write him for real and tell him whether "there is any hope." I honestly don't know! I have no real notion of his charachter and I am far, far from being able to rationally contemplate marrying _anyone _at the moment. I suppose it would be better simply to tell him no. But really, how can he ask such a question of someone he barely knows? It seems gravely naive of him to try.

In any case, I am not going to think of washing my hair _and _dealing diplomatically with a marriage proposal-by-post in a single day. The human mind was simply not meant to be stretched to such a degree- - not in _July_, to be sure. And so the Question of Cal Perkins will have to wait until tomorrow- and given that, it might as well go on waiting a few days more. That's May at the door now!


	68. August 13: A Great Game

**Saturday, August 13, 1904**

_You cannot grasp it. Seize the breath of morn,  
Or bind the perfume of the rose as well.  
God put it in my soul when I was born;  
It is not mine to give away, or sell_

Summer nearly over. I am already sick to death of the Tibetan campaign, which Paul Lard and all the Sitwells, not to mention Tom, think such a glorious business, or whatever it is they do think. I find very little to admire about shooting a lot of ill-equipped mountaineers for the crime of sharing borders with Russia and China - for I can't see that there is anything else to it, excpet for a kind of perverse desire to make boot-prints all over a clean patch of snow. And just to-day there was a poem in the _Enterprise _lauding the Japanese for their "pluck" in taking on Imperial Russia. Well, what of the pluck of the Tibetans agains Imperial Britain?

Tom jokes that this anti-British freak of mine is simply the rebel Scotch streak in my blood, confused and stifled by present conditions of peace and asserting itself as best it can in petulance. Very funny, I suppose. But you know, I was a perfect patriot in childhood, anyway until the South African war went sour. I would _like _to be patriotic. I don't want to write of it here - I have already been laughed at roundly by Ray and Frank and Tom for opening my mouth and inadvertently exposing my great girlish ignorance like a swath of bare leg. I'm sure I have nothing _rational _to say of it. But it is hard to unknow anything. I think that war was crueler than any of us _here _really knew- and when we began to _learn _it was too late and too far away to change, and now, having been so trumpted and bannered at the start, the whole dreadful mess has been swept under- buried in the ash-heap of memory, like an unpleasant secret. And what of the present venture? I doubt it will be redemptive, or even useful, to slaughter a lot of Tibetans and force our- _their_- - way into Lhasa ahead of the Russians. Yet I suppose in a few years Tibet will be just another corner of the Dominon with its own side-whiskered governor and Literary Society and a Union Jack fluttering merrily over tea and cakes in the anteroom of a milk-toast Church of Tibet beautifully got up in the local archetecture. Perhaps it is hopelessly sentimental to talk of places _belonging _to this or that people when they _must _be conquered and exchanged and brought into line with the future anyway- - if not by Britain than by Russia or the Turks or some other power, and probably suffer the worse for it.

Oh, dear, I am afraid sometimes that just to _remember what happened _from one moment to the next would be. . . would make the world impossible.

Well, I wrote to Cal, and said flatly that I was not prepared for nor had the time to spare for visitors and that his letter took me by surprise, and that I was a good deal busier than I am, and that I expected to be busy for some time- until Christmas at the earliest. That is the earliest I can conceive of being happy to see him, in all honesty- though I really phrased it all quite sweetly, with no sarcasm at all - - I promise. Perhaps a very small amount.

In the end I could not make myself refuse him decisively. Heaven only knows why; he hasn't any _real _attraction for me at all, except as a friend- - and that incidentally; I should feel no particular sorrow if he dropped out of my life for good. Perhaps that is why: I know I could never feel _overmastered_ by Cal; if he were a tyrant, I would only laugh at him; if he were unfaithful, I would feel betrayed only in the abstract. In a way perhaps it would be a relief and a comfort to be with someone I didn't care about in the least, and who looked well enough and loved me just the same. And certainly there is no _danger _in Cal. But that is not the reason I set for myself; I simply reasoned that it was unfair to dismiss as unsuitable someone whom, after all, I know almost nothing about. So really we are just as we were a month ago - - nothing resolved. I suppose this is cowardly- - for I _don't _want to marry him. . . yet. Who knows _what_ I may want by and by? I told him though, he must consider himself _completely free, _and I would do the same. A wholly unsatisfying reply, I know- - - but it was all I could give him without lying outright- - - for I _don't_ know. . . I don't know anything about it.

I sent that letter last Monday and have received no reply yet. Is it wrong to hope he gives up on me and _never _responds? Tom is rather dismayed by his friend and says it is no better than he deserves. But when I ask why, he rolls his eyes and tells me I'm better off not knowing. Hardly a thing to inspire confidence!

Tom is in town another week before he moves back to Halifax. He came by in the afternoon and we had a good old-fashioned chat. He worries about me, poor dear. And college has improved him, all told. Perhaps the other scholars have shown him up a time or two, for he's not nearly so stiff and pompous as before. Said he wouldn't bring me any more books till I went to a dance. I said it's not my fault the Shrewsbury girls don't want me showing them up. He grinned and said, are you too proud to accompany your humble cousin? So we went and had a splendid time.

It was Margery Chilton's and so the "crowd" was a good jumble of young and old. A whole clot of Priests were there - Eamon, Nate, Neil. . . and Dean, looking dreadfully stringy and out-of-place, but _oh-so-clearly _trying to affect an air of aloof and dignified amusement while all the while following like a helpless magnet . . . _could _it be? Yes! _Emily Byrd Starr_! So it seems Neil Priest may have had some basis for speculation after all. Emily was there with one of her bloodless cousins, but barely spoke to the poor fellow all evening, and _did _spend a good deal of time launching her affected smile at the elder Priest while the latter smirked and pawed the air around her face and the former picked at all her food. I couldn't get close enough to hear what they were saying, but I could tell by the look of him it was a lot of melodious hornswoggle. Well, why should I care what Miss Starr does? Only I didn't much like his air of_ ownership-_ - - that's all.

Ilse was there, and the center of attention as always, all got up in pink and yellow like a schoolgirl's straw hat. It stung my heart to see her- - - though whether because I'll never have her confidence, or her careless beauty, or her friendship, I don't know. "Ilse dear," I said, "I can't help but notice that Mr. Priest is paying a good deal of attention to Emily. Do you think he ought to be so forward?"

"What, Dean?" said Ilse, momentarily puzzled. "Oh, he's harmless. Odd duck enough, but then, so's Emily, when you get right down to it. Can't say it's any of _your _buisness anyhow, _dear_."

"It's not, of course, dear. But one can't help but _notice_ things. If you ask me. . ."

"Didn't," said Ilse laconically, poking the last half of a butter tart between her red lips. Then one of the Sitwells grabbed her, a half-second before the dance began, and she was swept up into it and away from me as ever.

May is flirting just as much as before now that Lou is back in Ch'town, and _I _certainly won't be the one to say a word about it. I have washed my hands of her completely. Poor May. She looks like an anxious chicken, all vanity and fear. Paul Laird asked me to dance then, and I assented- more that I was caught off-guard, though I have no objections to Paul beyond his general Paul-hood. He tried to talk to me about his internship with Wareham's and I couldn't listen; he kept circling the subject of the future- - - _our _future, as if there were any such a thing- - - stupidly round and round like a beetle in a bath-tub. In the end I had to feign a stomach-ache, and Tom and I went out under the open air to analyze all and sundry. The moon was so bright and swollen it was almost like day - - a day seen eerie and silvery through a vitascope camera, days or years later, perhaps.

I shall miss Tom dreadfully, of course, and miss the ability to take his earnest, quick-witted, nagging and affectionate presence for granted- - - but I'm_ not _going to be desolate, Diary. I know now that I have years and years ahead of me and I am going to _do something _in them, and that's all there is to it. I didn't bother telling Tom my plans as he'd only laugh at them, but I can tell _you _that I fully intend to conquer this year. I have already begun- - - well, I don't suppose I want to say too much _here_, either, but as for High School courses, I can see no reason why I shouldn't make well over eighty in all subjects with plenty of time left over for . . . well, whatever I choose! I expect I'll be able to tell you soon enough!


	69. August 28, 1904: Immortal Longings

**Sunday, August 28, 1904**

_A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet._

Why doesn't anyone read _Carmilla _anymore? I read it first when I was ten and barely understood a word, except that it was as delicious as chocolate by the stove with a storm raging outside. _Carmilla _is a vampire tale, and I think it is a little better than _Dracula _as far as that goes. Of course it is giddy and thin and unwholesome and trashy and from those things a kind of grace emerges. Do I have any earthly idea what that means, Diary? I do not. I only wrote it because it _sounded _true just now. What would Mr. Towers say, I wonder? Something half-audible and fully profane, no doubt. But never mind him. I shall be as nonsensical as I like in my own diary, and dream of what monsters I choose. A lazy afternoon and a warm day, and not a hint of autumn in it yet.

Oh, soon I will have to take up my books again and be _serious_. . . but I can't just now. Irene writes nagging me to finish the book she sent me - - - Mrs. Chopin's novel, that caused such a stupid frenzy of a kettle-storm a few years ago- - - and I _will_, but it isn't what I want at all just now; it is too much like the world, and at the same time not like enough. _Carmilla _is nothing like the world and everything like a seductive and meaningless dream, and think what you may, I like the latter better at the moment. In a few days I shall have to go back to reading Virgil and Emerson and Whittier and then you shall see how diligent I can be.

Anyway, _Carmilla _makes me feel that I am a good enough writer in the grand scheme of things, and Mrs. Chopin does _not_.

May's half-brother Rudolf is leaving for the West to study mining, and Mary is leaving for Blair Water as her little cousin was born early. Last night we three saw Rudolf off with a good deal of jollity and song-making and then spent the night here. May nearly spoiled it by complaining the whole time about Lou. But it was good anyway, somehow.

While they were both asleep, I thought of some phrase - - - just the seaweed-caress of a phrase, and though I tried to put it out of my mind and sleep, I couldn't. So I got up, lit the nub of a candle by my ink-pot, and set to scribbling it down. It was chilly and my eyes felt swollen with exhaustion but I couldn't stop; the thing grew and all I could do was clamber after it. Twice the candle went out and gave me excuse to go back to bed, but I didn't heed it.

When the sun came up I was still at my desk, a little fractured-feeling but still tethered to the page. _Then _I fell exhausted and crawled back into bed, and Mary and I slept away a little of the morning - - but not much. We went down to the park by the river and to the Booke Shoppe, but all the while I was far away- - - tethered to people who never were. All the while I talked with her about Carswell and Sitwell and McKay and Kent, the _others _whispered. I am going to sit up a little now and try to finish it, and see if it is worth something or not. And yet I don't know what would _make _it worth something. But there is no sense going back and forth about it to _you_, is there? I only have to see it through.

Only a week until school starts again. About that, the less said the better.


	70. September 5, 1904: The Albatross

**Monday, September 5, 1904**

_Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!  
Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!  
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,  
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!_

_Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées_  
_Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;_  
_Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,_  
_Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher._

Of course it was all just the same. Strange to be back, of course, but not after all terrible or humiliating - - rather like the old childish wish for "do-overs" granted, albeit under strict conditions. And I am a year older. But what of that?

The Preps this year are so childish-looking it's impossible to imagine I could ever have been one, and the Juniors - Preps of yesteryear - - seem hardly to have grown up at all. There was a noisy Senior meeting that was an exact echo of last years, with all the faces just slightly changed; the address by Dr. Hardy given even to the same idiosyncratic stresses on ED-u-cational a-SPIRE-ations, the same pauses - -I could swear - - for gulps of water through his dense moustache. Miss Alymer was asked no questions regarding this summer. She looked very greenish and watery, though- - - and faded, like wall-paper too much in the sun. I sought no speculation and made none. I guess she has been unhappy in love. The rumours around her are vague and damp, and one thing or another must be true, but let it be. She is as prim and as perpetually near tears as ever, though thinner.

Went shopping in Charlottetown with Aunt Iz Tuesday. She was in a rare fine mood- - exuberantly sarcastic, even, and full of quips and stories and poor imitations. She will never be _loveable_, I think, but she has grown a good deal more _likeable _in the past months. To _me, _anyway. Lil didn't come - I don't know if she was asked - - I suppose it's just as well. Is it right to _like _someone who's caused suffering- even to you, but to others who deserve it less? I _like _Aunt Iz. I don't admire her or wish to imitate her; I woudn't want her as a stepmother. She is even rather dreadful as an aunt. If she knew I were writing stories again she would miss no opportunity to discourage and deride me, and perhaps even stop speaking to me altogether. Oh, and I think it is no coincidence that she began to warm toward me only after. . . that is, only recently. Maybe she is only capricious. But she is funny and clear-eyed and spares no one, particularly not poor Uncle Henry, about whom she is blisteringly - - _cruel_, even, I would _almost _say, if everything she said were not true: his rages and pomposity, his ostentatious charities, his petty tyrannies at work and on the School Board and toward all his family, his envy of and contempt for Father and for Uncle Dan when he was living. _Then why did you marry him_, one might wonder? But I did not - - not out loud.

Mostly we talked about clothes and her favorite nothing, the dozens of dunces from her country school days. She talked about Ilse - - - how she used to come into school in torn clothes, like a convict's child, with her hair all matted and her eyes like coals. Well, no, that is my addition; what Aunt Iz said was, "The poor child looked like a street arab, and her father the doctor." "I tried to be kind to her," she said. "But it was not enough I simply had no patience left for foolishness. I simply could not." After thirty years of teaching school she had nothing left but a few old poems, a sheet of facts, a brown suit and her own hard-won imperviousness. Then why did she stay at it for so long, if she hated the work so much?

I said this; she turned her stony eyes on me; I can't say she _glared _or _searched_; she only _saw_.

"I suppose you think there was some other splendid career I could have pursued," she said. "What do you imagine that was? Should I have been a famous elocutionist, then? A _poetess? _Or should I have simply charmed some rich man with my beauty? _Really,_ Evelyn." She laughed contemptiously, with her awful teeth out. "Aren't you a little old for such notions? I thought you were cleverer than that."

I rolled my eyes and shrank; I didn't know what to say. Of course she would have preferred something else. She picked at twills and tweeds with her long dry fingers and the conversation resumed eventually; more dunce stories, tales of what not to be, of how to be foolish and ugly in a classroom setting, and then she told me to go to college if I could. I thought to cheer her up by telling her the story of Emily and Ilse's bathing without costumes, and Emily's adventure in the Dutton parlor with the Jaunty Bootblack, but she only sniffed and said, "I can't see why you're so _obsessed _with that silly girl. Haven't you anything better to think about?" Which was wholly unfair; I had said nothing about Emily for days, and nothing to _her _in any case. Still it was a good day, all in all, and we laughed more than a little, and bought some good stuff for a fall suit. Mrs. Halloran's cousin is going to make one up for me. She is a very broad, very silent Irishwoman with a decent enough reputation as a seamstress, and presumably better at making the new boleros than the skittish ladies of Mrs. Minara's where Lil and I have been accustomed to go. Well, we shall see. I can always tear it to pieces and have it made over. On matters of clothing, Father is nothing if not generous. I have had four letters from him since his return to Vancouver and all four are over half given over to what would look well on me this fall, and what his Chinless is wearing to various dinners. The rest are a mix of advice and account-keeping, and distractedly affectionate, like all the Blakes, as though some urgent business were always interrupting his declarations, and it were impossible to continue them later; they had to be sent as they were, half-said.

Aunt Iz thinks almost as ill of Father as she does of her husband. Whenever I get a letter from him she says, "Why hasn't he taken you back to live with him?" So I have stopped mentioning them. This makes her imagine that he is terribly negligent, I suppose, but that is better than being sniffed at and pitied.

_She_ never mentions parents, or any family, or anything about her youth. Yet she must have been young. Thirty years ago, when she was starting out in a little clapboard school at the end of a red road, in an overgrown hollow, in a dress she thought made her look almost pretty, so long as she kept her mouth closed. She must have had real friends then, and hopes barely speakable, like anyone- - any one of us. But I am only spinning stories. Really she is a bitter, spindly-boned woman of ungracious middle age, who would be happy to hate me the moment I give her reason to do so. Really I don't know her at all.


	71. September 8, 1904: Feast of Blood

**Thursday, September 8, 1904**

Midnight - The Hail-Storm - The Dreadful Visitor - The Vampire !

_Sleepers awakened, and thought that what they had heard must be the confused chimera of a dream. They trembled and turned to sleep again._

Came home from school on Tuesday feeling dizzy and chilled; Wednesday my throat was swollen but I went anyway, thinking it a bad cold, and nearly collapsed in Latin for my troubles; sent to lie in the infirmary for three hours; stayed home today; feel curiously alert for how miserable I am. I suppose staying up late night after night hasn't helped. It is nothing too serious; probably miss to-morrow as well just to be safe & go back Mon..

This morning poor old Halloran brought me an ancient printing of _Varney the Vampire, Or, The Feast of Blood: A Romance - - - _ no doubt because she heard I was reading "one of those vampire tales" a few weeks ago. "This one is the first, I think, and best," quoth'a. I am nearly certain she is wrong on both counts, but I've been too languid to do anything but read it mechanically. She means well! But. . . but. . . ! !

I gather it was popular in its day - it must have been, else how would Mrs. Halloran of all people come to own a copy? but _why _boggles me. Or perhaps _how_. It is hundreds and hundreds of pages of meandering, muddy anguish and confusing horror-scenes, with a vampire who may or may not be a real vampire but in any case is _very sorry _to be whatever sort of monster he is. In the beginning it barely seems _written _at all - - rather the author seems to be scrambling desperately to recapture some dream or story-idea before it slips away. Said author never uses a single word when he can use four or five; the church clock must not proclaim merely one, but "the hour of one," and lest we fail to grasp what is happening when the creature with the fangs clamps down on our damsel and "a gush of blood - - hideous sucking noise follows," the narrator is quick to explain that "_The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!" _

Perhaps it's only that my head is clouded, or feverish again. I _can't _tell if it's really this bad, or if it only _seems _so endlessly meandering and repetitive. No, I _must _be really ill; it can't _possibly _be this bad. Nothing holds together; narration and dialogue go reeling in dizzy drunken circles for pages and pages, whereby we learn that the two men's sister, Flora, whom they named Flora, is made conscious of one puncture mark or wound, or in truth two, for there was another a little way from the first, on the neck of Flora, who was their sister. "Flora, Flora," they say, addressing their sister Flora, who touched her neck where the two wounds were. By Flora they meant their sister Flora, and it was Flora who had been so recently attacked by the mysterious visitor whom Flora's brother had shot in defense of his sister, Flora. . .

On and on it goes like that, for uncounted pages, like a plodding, persistent walking dream. The heroes are rather stupid; they spend a good deal of time discussing vampire legends in the second chapter or so, after they shoot the vampire who attacked their sister; later they reject the possibility outright in favor of the "mosquito bite" theory, perhaps because someone reminded the author he had another 6000 pages still to write. Ugh, I feel drowned just _looking_ at it. Besides that, the author cannot decide whether the action takes place two hundred years ago or last Wednesday, or in some rootless limbo where everyone wears absurd Cavalier hats and buckle-boots and remembers the Napoleonic Wars. But I can't be sure. My head is twanging like a harp-string. Halloran say she'll call Dr. Burnley to-morrow if I'm not improved. Perhaps I'll have him read it and tell me whether it's really written this way.

Ugh, dizzy.


	72. September 10, 1904: Sickbed Soliloquy

**spt. 10 (?) (Night) [1904]**

"_I tell you, Flora Bannerworth, that he who talks to you of love, loves you not but with the fleeting fancy of a boy; and there is one who hides deep in his heart a world of passion, one who has never spoken to you of love, and yet who loves you with a love as far surpassing the evanescent fancy of this boy Holland, as does the mighty ocean the most placid lake that ever basked in idleness beneath a summer's sun."_

Oh, why should I cry at this awful book? ? it _is _an awful book, Ilse B. herself said so, but then of course I am _also_ sick, of course. My throat is all swollen - looks ghastly & whitish - - & ears ringing for s. reason; I had a fever but now just shivering nearly to break my bones. Poor Dr. B. was here in his usual heathen rage over nothing & near _trampled _Kitten & threw Mrs. H out of the room & called the book ridiculous. Well, I _know _it's ridiculous, everything is ridiculous, so why not this? It's no worse than anything else one might cry over. Freezing cold & the doctor seems to want me freezing to death. Snatched the bk. of my hands, & "The damned vampire off and kills himself, that's how it ends, stupid girl, & you will too, if you don't" etc. etc. etc.. I'm _not_ going to die, anyway, whatever they think. Ilse was here w. him- - why? Ice-blue shawl & blue dress & _earrings, _home from a concert? A party left early- - bright lamps burning in her skin. _You're a fiendish inconvenience_, _Evelyn_. So she said. wryly & sadly smiling. Perhaps.

Dr. B worse than useless; nearly split my ears with his petulant indignation and his why-the-devils and his nose-sighs. "Regrets" "deeply" we did not call him earlier at first symptoms - - bellowed and swore at poor old Halloran for "allowing" herself to commit the grievous sin of "allowing" me to read in my bed in peace and not be nuisanced by his_ regret._ Of course there is no real danger, or else I am fated for s. thing, or either way what does it matter if I write or sleep or not? He told H. and Uncle Henry not to permit me to read or write anything yet but no one listens to him, old quack of an infidel w. his stupid Byron hair and his cottage-cheese cheeks. . . He is gone now anyway & no one listens to him. Regret_ that,_ I suppose.

Only Ilse was any use whatever & sat down on the bedside & said, Never mind, I'll read to you if you like. She read a few pages in her rich clear voice; didn't look at me. The vampire made his declaration of love & she laughed. Maybe only the dead are able to love us in the way we hope for. No, that doesn't make any sense. There was something I meant, but I've forgotten it. They had come on their way to or from something; there were stars or flowers in her hair & evening clothes, & Dr. B. smelling of pomade and shaving cream. Why not regret your own mistakes, Dr. Burnley, and let me regret mine. Regret you "allowed" your little girl to grow up friendless and ignored as if she were a ghost and not a girl, and imagine you've made up for it now by petting and ribboning her like a fetish. Regret you couldn't see an inch past your own stupid tragedy for the ten minutes a day that you saw her at all. Maybe then she wouldn't have _imprinted_ completely & for all time on the first pasty-faced

the first petty-souled & selfish person to treat her like a human being, and then we could be really friends now, or someday. &

& if not, well, if not that, perhaps she could have been happier _anyway._

Oh, Ilse will be _all right, _of course, as if it mattered. We're all of us what we are in the end, because we can't be otherwise. But we could have been, a long time ago. And we always could have been, if everything were not as it is.

Regret _that, _Dr. Burnley.


	73. September 14, 1904: Duly Noted

**Wednesday, September 14, 1904**

Well, anyway, I am still alive. They had my tonsils out sometime in the week - - a nightmarish operation, & bloody, with ether, but not enough by half. Now my throat is numbish and scarred-feeling but the sides of my jaw and my ears are sort of pulsing with a dull pain. All gnawing appetite and nausea. Halloran has me on milk-toast and custard now and hounds me to swallow- - but I don't want to eat until I can _eat_.

Meanwhile, I've missed a whole pack of classes. Kath Darcy brought over what notes she could this afternoon. She is as sharp and unsentimental as she is good-tempered, & we had a fine gab over the new class' doings. I was afraid I would be too far behind, but it is really all the same as last year. Even the opinions are the same as _last _Senior class. Kath is a brick, and something of a genius in her offhand way, though none of the philistines here will recognize it because she wears wool stockings and flannel petticoats and a five-year-old hat, and knots her hair flat instead of puffing it. That is what counts for eccentricity in Shrewsbery, dear D..

I _meant_ to get a good start on my compositions, but it seems my head is still spinning, & every word I set down wobbles me a little. _You_ no exception, poor Diary. Well. I suppose I will placate Dr. Burnley and La Halloran and get some sleep.

Oh, but you'll never _imagine _who was elected class president. Not in a _thousand_. _E.B. Starr, _of course! Sure and she'll have a fine old time herding those cats, won't she? I wish her joy of it.


	74. September 22, 1904: The Skull and Owl

**Thursday, September 22, 1904**

_Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they going? Why are they thus?_

_He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow._

_He is alone. His name is God._

I've named the cat Fantine. Rather a bad joke, but as half of Shrews. insists on hearing it as "Phantom" _anyway_, I can't see that it harms anyone. Anyway, she is a vigilant ghost and a bright-eyed _grisette _enough, and will suffer nothing in her new cat-life, if I can help it. She is more loyal than any cat I have ever seen, and follows me to school now in the mornings, tip-toeing behind with a wholly kittenish and unholy swagger. To-day I smuggled her into history and kept her on my lap the whole hour, and poor old Dr. Ayers not a fraction the wiser. When class got out she leaped up and ran for the door - - a commotion followed, and Ayers spun around like a stage German - - but the best he could say was that _someone _had brought in an animal! I followed her outside and watched her curl up on the steps to sleep before I went back in and was late to English - which _ought _to be the best class of the day, but is _not, _because. . . well, more on that later. It is not a very interesting story, I'm afraid, Diary.

I am re-reading everything on my bookshelf, and everything is new. Some of the things I once loved seem cheap and far away now, and others, that I once though rather sloppy and foolish, are entirely fresh and _vivid_. Which cannot be said for any aspect of Shrews. H.S., needless to say.

The S& O is rather more of a disappointment this year than usual. I nearly _did _skip last meeting to go down to the harbour with Kath D. - would perhaps be happier if I quit entirely. but didn't dare. The S&O is still my native heath, even if I have, or feel I have, outgrown in somewhat - - and I have some_ value _there, if only because I'm the only one of all of them with the sense to proof-read, and Scoville thinks well of me for some reason. . . no, I am a coward; I must do the sensible thing. I am too much a coward to give up the one club that will have me. That is all it is really. Still! The new batch hasn't any judgement at all, & poor Matt McCreavy is the only Senior of any perceptible talent, as Emily B.S. was shoddy enough to _reject_ our invitation and wherever Emily goes, Ilse is sure to follow. Of course it is terribly bad form for the _president of the class _to _refuse _an honour from a school society, but hardly surprising. There's more than her fair share of Ruth Dutton in that one, to be sure. Perhaps it'll cost her dearly in the long run. . . and perhaps she'll never so much as notice; _I_ certainly don't know or care.

As for the Juniors - Jem McKenzie and Dorine Priest are bright enough, if somewhat fatally callow. Well, aren't we all! The rest are well-scrubbed and stuffed to the eyes with Royal Reader quotables- - - decent boys and girls, no more. I suppose E.B.S. would only have made everyone _miserable_ with her incessant flirting and her coldness, but it would have been a relief to have _someone _in the S&O who paid attention to the _sound_ of a poem. The new Juniors especially seem to feel quite satisfied if the lines _look_ pleasingly arranged and contain one or two of their favourite words. It is honestly _all _I can do to be half-way pleasant to them.

And what have _I _written in the meantime? Oh, nothing much at all. Only the outsides of things, the winds beating on the windows of stories. Oh, but one day they will break in, I _know_, and then- - - then - - - I don't know what will happen.

I got a compliment I never expected to-day. Miss Alymer liked the composition I wrote about my experiences at the newspaper. She smiled at me in her wavering way and said, "I enjoyed reading this. I felt as though I were remembering something I'd never experienced."

I do not always agree with Miss Alymer's tastes but her compliments are quite pleasant.


	75. October 7, 1904: Bright Star

**Friday, Oct 7, 1904 **

_Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—_

Well, Fantine is a regular demon of destruction to-day, and I am glad of it. This afternoon she glimpsed a spider on the window-sill by my writing desk and _leaped _on it from the floor, scrambling my papers and knocking an entire cup of hot tea over all. Never such a deluge! The whole left half of an essay on Montaigne is scalded, the French book spoiled, and my old lawn waist utterly ruined, while the grey devil sits calmly on the bed, prim as you please, her tail locked round her legs, and surveying the whole with a superciliously bewildered expression, as if to say, "Who on earth could have made such a mess!"

Why should I be glad of such a thing, you ask?

Aunt Iz brought me a teasing look with the mail to-day, for one of the letters was from the dreaded Cal Perkins - and _why _dreaded? only because he wants of me _what I cannot give;_ - anyway, I have asked her not to pick up my mail and it only makes matters worse, for of course _now _she thinks I have something to hide, and that the _something _in question is Cal. Of course, I couldn't care less about Cal or what Aunt Iz thinks, only I don't like her going through my correspondence and drawing _conclusions. _Her conclusions are _always _wrong and she drops the most inane and meaningless "hints" to try to make me blush. The worst of it is, she thinks she's being friendly- - thinks we are great friends now and she can twit me about "beaux," as though we were fourteen together. Well, I am sorry for her - - but it _is _galling, Di.

Cal's letter was full of brittle cleverness and awful love-making - - - it filled me with doubt. _How _is it possible for him to _love _me, or imagine he does. . . I think it must be a terribly shallow affection, yet he writes as though I had _already _given him some cause to - - hope, I supposed he would say. Ugh!

I set it on my desk knowing I _had _to answer it, and dreading the task, and just when I had leapt up to pace the room in despair over what I could say, Fantine the Hunter sprang up from the floor and knocked hot tea all over it and everything else. So I can tell him so in good conscience, and be properly sorry for the very true fact that I was unable to make out a word of it.

Otherwise school grinds on. I can't tell from hour to hour whether it's the worst year of my life of the best. Most of the time, I feel all right in a vague way. Kath Darcy is a good daily chum, though we really have very little in common. When I suggested she come to S'Side with me to look at some new hats, she said, "I like this one" - a bunchy five-year-old sailor fit for an orphan - "it suits my head." No use to tell her a thing is out-of-date, you might as well tell her the sky is blue or potatoes grow in the ground; she simply nods solemnly as one might to a child of three, and says, "Well, that's true." This makes her interestingly impervious to most forms of insult common at the H.S., and also deeply frustrating. But you never feel as though she is looking you up and down to find some point of weakness - never that she is reassuring herself by some failing of yours. We have a moderately good time of it - no hysterical friendships of passion for Kath D. - and I am peaceable enough with one or two of the S&Os and Hazel and the Noonans, though I have turned down two invitations in the past three days alone out of sheer failure to see the point of them. No doubt Father will hear of it and make a fuss - - but what of that?

The only sour spot in my day is English. I wish it weren't so. We're reading Keats and Tennyson and all at once I have more to say about the both of them than I ever imagined - Keats in particular, whom I had always written off as a lot of meaningless prettiness, this year seems a house with many mansions. But I can't so much as open my mouth without Emily and Ilse flicking _looks _at each other. Oh, I know it's petty! and shouldn't I have a thicker skin by now? But it _jars_ me still. Miss Starr doesn't care _what _I say. . . I doubt she hears the words at all over the crescendo of her own smugness. She lights up in one luminous smirk at the sound of my first breath, and settles stupidly into disdain. I _hate_ her. There! I said it. It's dismal to pretend not to hate anyone. I hate her stupid puckered smile and her bruisey eyes and her stiff neck and her simpering _remarks_, and I hate that the moment she walks into the room, Ilse Burnley utterly ceases to see me. I suppose these are not good enough reasons to hate, but I don't care. A little hate is better for me than none- - like the pinch of pepper. Is it ridiculous to think she snubbed the S&O just to spite me? Oh, of course! she simply imagines she is _too far above _a silly high school fraternity - with her seed-catalog poems and her dialect stories!

Anyway, she has caused a predictable stir enough with her pig-headedness. Kath's uncle, of all people, came in today proposing a poetry contest for the H.S., and given E.B.S.'s pretentions and her conduct toward the S&O, I suppose it's caused more of a fuss than is strictly to be expected. Certain of the Junior Owls are quite wondrously wroth about it and make a sickening fuss this afternoon of nominating each other to "beat Miss Starr." It is all rather silly and the prize is nothing very interesting. I begged Kath to sneak me a look at the entries so that I can have a laugh but she's far too moral to hear of it, in the usual way of girls who can't dress themselves. Pity.


	76. October 8, 1904: Unspoiled

**October 8, 1904**

Kath and I went up to the hotel this Saturday with Mary to see the All-Island Spelling Bee finals - one of the few known irreproachable amusements, according to Shrewsbury elders, and quite surprisingly compelling all the same. Our postmaster's granddaughter was there and took second place- - - a tetchy, dark little thing with a dazzling glower and badly twisted teeth, who could barely keep arms and legs still on the dais and fell gallantly in the thirty-second round, with "albuminous**" **- an abominable word. We went down to congratulate her, and assure her it was abominable, and tell her to come to High School next year. "What do you want to go in for?" Kath asked bluntly, and the poor thing said, "I _am _a writer. I want to go on being one," and glared at Mary and I for laughing as though she really believed she could burn us alive. It was funny to see her gape up at us in her skimpy skirts and forget to cover her mouth from excitement. I was exactly her age once, and imagined myself quite grown-up, and my friends slender or statuesque beauties in full flower, and my mind a wonderful and terrible secret - and all the while the "big girls" were smiling over my head in infinite amusement.

"Well, so's Ev," said Kath - - utterly unperturbed as usual. "Ev's written for the newspaper, and she had a story in an American magazine." The girl's small puffy face took on an ugly expression of concentration as she looked me over. "She's in the literary society - the Skull and Owl. When you come to High School, you can write for the school magazine. And there's a contest this year for best poem."

"That's all right, I guess," she said. "But I'm a _real _writer."

Then a crowd of her friends came over, leggy, tousled, festooned schoolchildren chirping "Well done, Polly!" and things of that sort, and she seemed to grow younger and less serious as they surrounded her. Then we met May outside the dining room and went out on the hotel porch for sodas.

We watched the spelling-bee families disperse and, as they left, the last of the summer Americans wandering around the beach trying to look contemplative. May is working in the dining room now, and boarding at the hotel, an ill- whim of her stepmother's, or perhaps May's own whim disguised. She was sharp and sentimental and we had nothing to talk about but her Mitchell's people and the Americans, who pad up and down the beach in search of a view empty of all but nature and their shade-chairs, and are hurt when you show evidence of having read a newspaper. "They like you to be unspoiled," says May bluntly. They rather like May. She's saving money for her "wedding things," so as not to be beholden to the Mitchells - "I can't bear the though of them buying my linens for me," she says. "I'd just want to rend my face very time they looked at me." I can't quite fathom May as a grown-up person - wife of some _man _I barely know - for her face is the same now as ever, and all her scheming, skinless, bubbling-over ways. It seems as though she ought to be changed. Perhaps she is and I don't notice it. Perhaps she's weathered a dozen storms that no one knows anything about. Who would ever tell me?

It was late when we returned home. Mary spent the night with me. I couldn't sleep.

Then I did something foolish, or not foolish- - I don't know yet. Perhaps it was the night and its stars and its black waves shimmering, and perhaps it was May and her needling Mitchells and her face just the same as it was at thirteen, and maybe it was the postmaster's granddaughter with her big dark eyes full of - - something that is hers, for I don't feel right in speculating to-night, on someone who is a real person after all and separate from me- - or an unwanted memory or some old line whose cadence sways me though the words are all forgotten - or my cat's small head nuzzling at my hand and the bridge the pen makes between body and inkwell, veined fingers and paper - - or because I cannot say what I mean- - - because of all these things, or none, I came home and wrote to Cal fourteen sloppy sentences, to the effect that I could never marry him, I did not love him and would not, and that I would prefer he not write again. At the last minute I added, "except in friendship." Then I ran outside in the chill wind, hatless, to put it in the mailbox before I could falter again. Now my room is full of the night air and my lungs are stinging still.

Well, I am glad it's over. No need to analyze it - - - I could not have married him; he knows now that I cannot. Perhaps I was a little cruel. If he really is as infatuated as he pretends, I expect it will seem so. But it is better to be cruel and _honest,_ I think, than its opposite - - -better for me and for him and for whomever he will marry instead. I wonder how many marriages are miserable because one or the other would not be "cruel." And no one can say that I tortured him with a false hope. No one can say I led him on.


	77. October 12, 1904: Doll Parts

**Wednesday, October 12, 1904**

Two letters to-day.

In one, Cal - - - I don't know how even to begin to address this letter, except by copying it whole, and I can't do that because I tore it up - - could piece it back together, but I won't. I would have to _look _at it then.

In a word, he is angry - - -not hurt or sad but "really most infuriating" "really most justifiedly angry" that I would "dare" "have the gall to" "in such a caviler manner" "utterly without explanation"

I can't say that I _read_ it at all so much as ran through it in a panic. Halfway through I grabbed a pen and _stabbed _it- - - a childish spasm that solved nothing and spattered ink on the window and walls. It- - - in _fourteen pages, _he upbraids me for being "silly" and "frivolous" and "a known flirt" and alludes to "certain tales I have heard but discounted _until now_" - - -yes, those are_ his _italics - - but then, _then _when he has insulted me up and down, and all but called me. . .any number of things- - - he _then refuses to accept _that I won't _marry _him!"I cannot," he says, "consider you free without sufficient explanation." And he demands - - - that is _his _word - - _demands_ to know whether there is - again _his _italics- - "_someone else_?"

I can't begin to answer that question. Yes - - no - - never - - always. What right does he have to ask it? What difference can it possibly make, when I just now said that I didn't love _him _and could not marry _him, _whether there is or might be "someone else"? There is _not _Cal Perkins - - -that should suffice!

Yet from his perspective, he must believe he did everything right - a handful of chummy letters, a handful more of breezy compliments, a month or two of mush, and then the earnest declaration. What _did _he do wrong? If there never _had _been anyone else, would I have played my part as admirably, and swooned, and agreed to become Mrs. Cal Perkins of Maine?

I don't know.

I wrote on a sheet of foolscap: NO, until I had filled it, and then threw it in the fire. I burned one of the pieces of the letter but am keeping the rest, to show to Tom. _He _will talk to Cal and settle him, I hope. And laugh at me. Why shouldn't he? The whole situation is ridiculous.

Then there is Father's letter.

_That one _is a a little whirlwind of affection and good cheer, its primary purpose being to inform me that I will soon ("with God's blessing") have a little baby brother or sister, and by the way, what's this he hears about a poetry contest, and really, what a splendid opportunity for his Evie, who was always so clever at that sort of thing.

He insists - no, _knows _that _I have _entered it, and why on earth shouldn't I - - for I _am _his Evie, his good little clever girl Evie, and can't his Evie can write circles around those shabby High School dowds, and won't his Evie always shine like a harmless distant star, and wouldn't his Evie leap at any chance to prove herself still worthy of his love, after all these silly misunderstandings - - wouldn't she do this one thing. easy as breathing for a clever girl like her - - of course! of course! And what would she say to a trip out West next summer to celebrate, provided. . .?

It doesn't even matter that I can see right through him.

Oh, I can win it. He's right about that, the observant dear. Only it won't be _mine, _will it, whether my hand forms the words or not. There won't be anything true I can give them, nothing I can write in earnest now that would not seem to them a mass of muck, a madwoman's head full of brambles. No, I can't explain it. When I was fourteen and wrote pretty windup-doll rhymes like Miss B.S., I could have showed them my little naked doll-soul, my smooth cloth body and empty eyes. But I am grown up now- grown old inside if not out, and a naked soul is an obscenity. I cannot possibly give any poem of mine to Dr. Hardy and Mr. Towers and Professor Darcy of McGill to hang in a shop-window and be gawked at. Not in this town in this year of Our Lord, not I, not now.

But that isn't what he wants to hear. That is the opposite of what he wants. So I will have to make up some sweet-faced simulacrum of Evie-as-she-might-have-been, the pretty doll-verses of a pretty doll-child. Your Evie, flashbulb-white and without stain. Or I'll just pull something from somewhere; I haven't decided. Which is worse, I wonder?


	78. October 23, 1904: Fall Sudden

**Sunday, Oct. 23, 1904**

Rain. It's almost too cold to go walking now - - fall sudden and heavy this past week. Ominous, like anything.

I did write to Tom. His reply was an odd mass of contradictory jokes - - I am a reckless innocent and Perkins a notorious cad at Dalhousie, and the idea of my irresistability is enormously funny, and there isn't a thing he can do, really, but why did I let the poor thing think I cared in the first place? Which I did, it is implied, simply by allowing him to write to me at all. Uncle Henry grumbles and Aunt Dan frets about belligerent carelessness of modern girls - - for if I had the great good fortune to be born in _their _generation, no doubt, I would _know _everything and act correctly by osmosis - - -for no one was ever confused or wronged or misunderstood in those harmonious days. This followed by another impatient note from C.P. - _not_ fourteen pages this time, but terse and distractingly misspelled and threatening to visit Shrews. in person "to talk it over." Which _forced _me to reply, of course, if only to stave him off appearing on Uncle Henry's doorstep.

I've gone and decided to enter the competition. I don't suppose I want to write much of it. The whole thing makes my head hurt. Deadline Nov. 1. Of course by now nearly the only person who has _not _prematurely congratulated me on my poetry prize is Aunt Iz, who thinks the whole thing beneath mention. I'm not counting the H.S. crowd, of course - - - or Kate Errol, whom I haven't heard from in a month. Miss Alymer asked after her this morning, and I had to admit I hadn't the faintest idea. I suppose she has other friends now - - -if a girl of Kate's type _has _friends in the traditional sense. But what am I saying? I _am _a girl of Kate's type.

Too much delayed thinking I could refurbish one of my old poems for the purpose. . .ended up burning most of them, to the everlasting wrath of Mrs. Halloran, who can't bear me wasting paper when the backs are still blank. I even looked through the few "pieces" I had from childhood, in hopes I could re-write them in a more elegant vein. Learned that reports of my early promise have been greatly exaggerated. Anyway, I knew from the start it wasn't going to get me anywhere, but the alternative wasn't much better . That, too. . .

Whatever I write here next will be a lie.

A half-truth at best.

So why write anything?

Took the summer road over the hills to see Mary Carswell in B.W. last week-end. I don't think it pleased her overmuch. Her cousin's house was a regular shambles and the baby inconsolable. Cousin Amy was at a loss to justify my presence there, and made valiant attempts to link my family with theirs. . . wondering four times if I were one of the Dewey Blakes over the _other _Priest Pond, and who my mother was, and finally satisfied herself with the assurance that _his _grandmother - - -meaning her hairy-handed husband - - -was a John, yes now, that married the MacLeisters over White Cross - - -and the baby, a pulsing, pustuled lump of suffering flesh, howling away through it all!

Really _meant _to spent the night- - - I'd told Mary I would - - but after all I _couldn't_; it was too forlorn and close-together and mildewy. No, that is too shallow; you'll think me a monster. Well, I don't know how to justify it; only felt the walls closing. Said I missed my cat - - -which was _true_, if impolite - - -and had really more studying than I thought, which was_ not_.

"A what now," said Cousin Amy.

"Never did like cats myself," said Hairy-hands.

Mary didn't protest as I thought she might. Hoped? What good would it have done? When Hairy-hands drove me home in his bone-rattler she stayed behind to mind the baby so that Amy could finish mending. Resolved to write her a long letter the moment I got home, but have not.


	79. November 25, 1904: Waving, Drowning

**A little past noon, Friday, November 25 1904 **

_And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions, Madame! The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies. . ._

Poor neglected Diary; will you ever manage to hold my attention for more than a smattering of days? You must wonder sometimes why I bother. Why, so my great-grandchildren will know that Nov. 25 was dreary and near-blinded with cold rain and mud, and the wind north-westerly, of course! and that the sky was slate for four days running- - - or is it five? I can't hear the sea from my bedroom, great-grandchildren, but to-day I imagine I can.

Note also : your ancestor was an incorrigable hoyden to-day & shall be incorrigible for another four hours before I have to go & be a pillar of the youth again. I've lain abed all morning and not touched a school-book. Mrs. H. is away visiting & had to make my own fire this morning. Nearly didn't bother; in any case missed school. Too much of a chore to get out from the quilts & feeling gorged and bovine anyway from what Dr. Burnley's medical encyclopaedia rather romantically calls The Perilous Shoals of Girlhood. Still haven't written Mary. Just lolled & finally read that book by Mrs. Chopin, only so that I could tell Irene I had, & wished I hadn't as I knew I would. In the end thought "Edna" rather too stupid & silly to care about. No, that isn't it. I read the whole book all the while meaning to tell you in some clever way how weak & foolish its "heroine" was and what a flimsy filthy & pretentious rag the whole thing was, just as in the sputtering review in _Madison's _Tom & I laughed over four years ago. But it isn't those things. For all its exotic setting it is stark & near-by. I don't know honestly whether I liked it or not or whether I ought to have read it or not. I am too ill to-day to think about anything so philosophical & that is my excuse.

C.P. came to Shrews. after all, and there was a scene. Nothing in the least worth writing about, only I can't imagine anymore why I thought I _could _marry him. I think he counted on me to break down when face to face with his rather sloppy suffering in full flower. But he was wrong; I am heartless. So much the better. He went away in a rage, then came yelping back, then finally went away again. Aunt Iz stayed with me in the parlor the whole time, and feigned obliviousness and insult at his hints that she should leave. At last he stood up and _grabbed _me by the wrist, and said, "Evelyn, I want to talk to you _alone," _whereupon Aunt Iz stood up, stony-eyes and terrible in sealskin and silks, and he wilted away like a fistful of May-flowers.

Tom, of course, persists in finding the whole thing hilarious. Well, and so it is. . .from a distance! "Bright young schoolboy courts enormous block of ice." But I cannot write the whole sordid thing up as a comedy, as Aunt Iz and the rest of the family rather stupidly imagine I want to. Perhaps I will _someday, _but now I would rather forget it happened.

Sometimes I am shocked at how we talk of marriage. . . I mean how very _much_ we talk of it without ever saying anything inthe least pertinent. What is the purpose of innocence? It puts my head in knots to realize how caviler we decent boys and girls all are about courting and kissing and marriage and keeping company. To hear anyone at the H.S. talk of it marriage is only a kind of elaborate never-ending party game that no one is allowed to beg off playing. And there are as many ways of losing as there are husbands. And none of us will ever know _for certain _is she has really won.

The S&O is having a party and concert to-night & must go and read dead poetry & smirk at everyone. What would they do if I simply refused to come out? I am absolutely dreading it to the bones. Of course I will go anyway. You think I sound intolerably gloomy, but I'm _not _really. I'm happy, I think. There is simply not much to say - - - too much, rather, of nothing. I plug along at school without too much trouble (though mathematics seems thornier this year than last, and Travers is nothing but sarcastic to me anymore), and make excuses not to write because I feel queer and fearful whenever I seem to be on the precipice of doing something worthwhile. The S&O concert is only the latest excuse; I offered to organize and recite and have done nothing for the past three weeks but complain that I have no time - - - thus planting evidence, in my diary and the _Times_ social page, of what very good reasons I have for never writing anything. Between the concert and daily schoolwork and the _Quill _and the forthcoming exams, plus the requisite "visits" and other social folderol, how could I be expected to manage to write anything? And so it is eminently reasonable and _correct _that I do not. That is the real reason for everything I do - - - everything is in order _not _to write.

But why? Why does everything I _want_ always seem like a precipice? _Is _it? What do I lose if I _do _sit down and waste a little ink on this sketch I half-began two months ago? Why is that so much more frightening, and dull, and impossible, than wasting ink on _you, _Diary-my-love? For it _is _a waste, all this circling and stammering and well-dear-now-i-suppose-rathering about the same sort of nothing as always.

And it is not true in any case. I am _also_ going to the concert because I want to be admired, and I want to see my friends and have clever, shallow conversations and laugh out loud, and to fill the modest coffers of the S&O, and because if I _don't _I'll only spend the evening idle and moping _anyway. _Those are true reasons as much as any other, even if they are not overly admirable.

I haven't anything worth wearing to this party; I shall feel ugly and sore-thumbish all evening, stay out all night and be dead and groggy all the next day. But I am not unhappy. I am _glad _to have something petty and harmless to complain of. I am happiest, I think, when I can stand a little above everyone around me, and make comforting general statements about their "nature," and reflect on how little I belong here. In a way it suits me perfectly well to roll my eyes at my neighbors, and smile knowingly over them, and pretend that if not for my patient loyalty and their pitiful small-mindedness I would be _something else,_ already some bright phoenix or another. _  
_

That is not very pleasant of me, but it is true.

And I know that I will have to go far away if I am ever to be any different, and _that _frightens me worse that the thought of having to marry some man I've never met. Clever, sensible Evelyn of Shrewsbury - - - that prematurely dour Queen Street matron in embryo whose face is already, _as I write this _, beginning inexorably to harden into certain quintessentially Blakeish lines of amused disapproval and offended hauteur - - - well,_ she _is a monster, and ridiculous to boot. But the other- - -Evelyn of Boston or Vancouver - - - the changed, better person in a wider world - - _she_ is a stranger. Less than a stranger. A photograph of a fashion plate, superimposed over a magic-lantern streetscape. I cannot imagine her as _myself_ at all.

Perhaps it isn't writing that I fear at all, but the _answer _to the question, "Why are you afraid?"

Dorine is coming by with Paul & her "beau" to drive me, as Uncle Henry and Lil are away in S'Side. I don't know how he's going to manage the roads if the rain keeps up. It was frozen a few days ago but now all is mud. You might as well try to navigate them in a boat as in the Laird's old rockaway. I've a terrible premonition we're all going to be trapped there and have to spend the night at the Hall like a never-ending Prep Pow-Wow. Well, I shall walk home through the rain before that happens!


	80. December 4, 1904: We Have A Winner

**Sunday, Dec 4, 1904**

It's a strange thing after all. I _knew _I would win the contest, really as frankly and without shame as I might know any ordinary fact, yet when the results were posted outside Dr. Hardy's office, I didn't want to go and see them; Kath and Hattie had to tell me - - -ran up to me with boot-heels clattering - - "Evelyn! Evelyn, you won!" And then it all seemed like a bad joke. I _meant _to win; I should have been miserable if I hadn't, but there was no joy in it. I felt all in a fog. Dr. Hardy had me up before Assembly & I felt sure I would wake up, or burst out crying. But I stayed and smiled right along. They had me read it aloud before everyone & though my hands shook I was glad & sorry I had chosen something old I didn't much care about. The words tasted awful & jumbled & stuck in my throat. Much celebration from the S&O, and plans to put it in the January number with some illustration. Miss Alymer stood by me trembling with tears in her eyes, the stupid woman. Called me, "Dear, dear, Evelyn!"

When I am safely in Vancouver, I think I shall tell you the real story of that poem, Diary. As it is there is only_ one_ person who will know what it means, and he . . . I don't know where he is or why he would care. Kath is happy it was me and wants Professor Darcy to have me to dinner with some of the English faculty at McGill. Professor Darcy told the school at assembly he was "inestimably proud of his gifted countrymen" and predicted rather heatedly that Prince Edward Island would soon "take its rightful place on the literary map of North America, and indeed the world." Which is rather a lot of portent to shovel onto sixty well-mannered lines, but no matter.

Uncle Henry had Father on the 'phone yesterday afternoon to tell him the news. Such an odd, faraway sound, as though he were underwater. I'll never really get used to the telephone. And hearing his voice always gives me the confusing sensation of being really a child again, & only imagining having grown up. I suppose I'll get over that soon enough in Vancouver.


	81. December 12, 1904: Can Lit

**Monday, December 12, 1904 **

Professor Darcy was so charmed by that silly little poem of mine that he put us all up - that is, Kath, Mrs. Halloran and I - at the hotel for a treat - - "a poor substitute," he says, for the trip to Montreal he would have lavished on me if the weather were not so unpredictable. Rather a foolish indulgence with exams so close! But I am not worried about my own exams, and Kath never needs to. "In the spring, though, really, Miss Blake, you must promise," says he, "to come and meet my colleagues, and read for us." One of his cronies from McGill was staying at the hotel, though he was in the Zoology faculty and _of _the Zoology faculty and by consequence wholly out of his depth; only nodded energetically (his side-whiskers wafting in the air around him) and from time to time said something like, "Well, certainly, Horace knows all about it, you know. I only know about bones and things, but as for poetry, Horace is your man." But he was very kind and pleased to meet me, and asked me to visit him in Montreal someday - - only a courtesy, but he said it as though he really meant it.

The past week went by in a daze. Wednesday afternoon Aunt Dan took me to have my picture done at Mr. Martel's studio, in dark sage & grey with pearl buttons. I'm sure to shudder when I see my face in it, but at least my clothes looked well. To-morrow Mr. Towers is coming to write up a biographical sketch for the _Times_. The promised set of Parkman - in all its cheaply marbled mail-order glory - sits smug in the front window of the Shoppe to await its triumphant homecoming. And Father. . . sends a Japanese silk parasol, and his congratulations.

It is all rather embarrassing, but nice just the same.

Prof. Darcy says I am wasted here; I must come to Montreal, a beautiful city, like the cities of Europe, a great Canadian city for artists and poets "like yourself." Prof. Darcy's confidence in the native talent deepens and broadens with every passing hour - - heavily abetted, Kath tells me, by the old-fashioned "blood tonic" he has smuggled into our putatively teetotal island in his little silver flask. Montreal is a sleeping giant, Paris and New York in one, and I am a snowy fount of rhyme and image, and the world will take notice of us all before long, aye, before the decade ends. Meanwhile Kath and I nearly broke a rib each laughing and Mrs. Halloran's face left little doubt about her opinion regarding all things mainland and Frenchified.

Kath suits me exactly. I don't know when I've had such fun as with her. She is like the bracing sea wind, steely and bright, _intelligent_ without being the least bit _brilliant. _I don't know why I cower so in the shadow of brilliance, but I _do._ I turn to dust inside at the least spark of it. Envy, I suppose, or self-consciousness.

Perhaps that's the real reason Ilse and I never quite got on. Perhaps I _can't_ blame it on poor Emily, dreadful as she is in herself. Oh, how she glared at me in school all week! What hideous faces she makes, slitting her garish eyes at me and sucking in her cheeks! I could laugh - - and I _do_, don't you doubt it! Oh, but now that I am really _leaving Shrewsbury _in the summer I feel I can pity her, even wish her well, love her, even. . . from a distance. And why not? What could stop me? Whom can I _not_ love on a clear, cold night, when the world is hushed and the years before me. . . perhaps not entirely purposeless? What difference does it make to _me _that a prideful, scrawny, hapless she-creature glares at me in the High School? Haven't I burned up with envy on a thousand occasions, and with far less cause than poor Emily has now? We are not so different in small ways. Perhaps she, too, has a diary whose patience is perpetually tried.

The hotel dining room is nearly empty now, the waitresses (May is home visiting) sleepy and disinclined to smile as they must in summer. It's only ever so slightly ghoulish in its winter silence, the few fur-trimmed Americans almost embarassed, huddled against the gorgeous grey and the fog. A couple from Boston came to dine with us and made duck-mouths at Professor Darcy's proclamations. They pronounced the poem, "really just lovely," and the Island equally "lovely," and these things in precisely the same tone of voice, with the same gestures, as though I had conjured up poem and Island together as a special treat to please them. But at the end of the dinner he gave me the address of his "old schoolmate," a magazine editor in New York, with instructions to let him know "if I have any more of that sort of thing," which set Professor Darcy off again. "New York doesn't come into it," he said - - by then he was speaking _quite _loudly. "We who are Abegweit-born. . . " well, I am not sure _what_ it is we know better than any gold-plated, plush-armchair Yankee, but it was something poetic, I have no doubt. He really is a splendid talker, Horace Darcy. I wish we could have recorded it all for posterity. We larked about all Saturday and Sunday at the hotel, Kath and I, and stayed up all ours in the blazing beautiful electric lights, drinking soda and cream and listening to the sea drown out our elders, and fell to quiet ourselves on the grey edge of the world with the stars above us. We all rode home late Sunday evening in the big Darcy sleigh, in a fine mist of near-snow, singing and laughing. I think even poor old Halloran had a jolly time in spite of herself.


	82. December 14, 1904: All That Glitters

**Thursday, December 15, 1904**

Nothing but ice everywhere now. The whole house is freezing; the heat just _vanishes_ half a foot from the stove. My teeth are going to chatter themselves to little bits & won't Father feel foolish then for spending so much money on my clothes?

Mary is back in town for the time being. Her cousin's little baby died of the whooping cough. Mary thought she would stay on and help with the housekeeping, but they wouldn't have it. She is boarding with Mrs. Adamson again and looking for work. Broken up about it and very quiet when I went to call. She ought to just stay here with me, but won't make up her mind to. Says she wishes she'd just gone for her teaching license in the first place, then shrinks at the though of having charge of a country classroom. It _is _awful work. Shrewsbury Lower School was nothing like one of those rural-distric toolsheds and heaven knows _we _were trouble enough.

Exams are already underway - - I had two yesterday and one to-day, and suffered only a little from the distractions of the past two weeks. The only one that worries me at all so far is the chemistry. It's such a barbaric lot of jumble to make a poor girl learn, and no good at parties. Kath drilled me "something fierce," though, and I think I managed to stumble through.

A very nice letter came in the mail yesterday evening from a gentleman in New Hampshire who only wanted to tell me what a laugh "A Country Schoolma'am" gave him. I was in knots all day over it. He wanted to know "where to find more of your work." I wrote out a long caustic reply that I had poached the story wholesale fom the life of an aunt, and that it was not funny, but sad, and if he thought it was funny I had failed utterly; furthermore, that nothing worthwhile had ever come from _my _pen and _my _mind, nor would, that everything I am was stolen, and he was a fool if he couldn't see as much for himself. Then I burned it, of course. What else can one do with the truth? A fine dusting of ink and smoke in all our lungs.

Mr. Towers acting oddly, didn't think much of the poem and was rude about it. Well, what he said was: "You've gone and written something _dull, _damn it. I didn't think you had the power." Mr. Towers never _does _give a compliment unles he is mad about something. Well he is right! it is a worthless poem, I only chose it _because _it was worthless - but what good would trying to explain _that _do anyone?

Still, my photograph didn't turn out as hideously as I expected - - indeed, I look almost pretty with the right squint of the eye - - and the "biographical sketch" got up by Miss Alymer and the _Times _managed to make me sound like quite the accomplished miss, and was blessedly vague on the subject of last summer's terminal exams. Such a neat, bright, and useful girl, tending her little garden of school prizes and precocious publications - serene and confident in her pearl-buttoned bolero - - oh, I very nearly felt a pang of envy for her myself! And then I felt quite at peace again, with the enthusiastic American - who is welcome to his comedy, after all! and Mr. Towers and everyone, for whatever I am _really _I am all right on the surface, _better _than all right . . . for all anyone knows. . .and that is all that matters in the end.


	83. February 12, 1905: The Days Like Weeds

**Sunday, February 12, 1905**

_Yet is it wasted, that which wells unseen, - - _

_Escape that might have been?_

_The voice withheld, can vision wither so?_

_Shall not the risen longing overflow_

_Unto the needs_

_Of joyless duties, thronging parched and low_

_Among the days like weeds?_

Is it really February already? The last months seem all one long, grey afternoon. I have been busy. Well, more accurately, I have busied myself, idle hands being the devil's etc etc, and besides that, I suppose I have been happy, or at any rate less lonely. May posterity forgive my lapse - - - or more likely, regret it wasn't longer. I have been so nearly satisfied with my existence these past months that I did not even bother to mark when a tiresome dialect story written by a certain E.B.S. was copied in the _Ladies' Standard _"Lighter Touch" department to a general Shrewsbury din. Whatever I _could _say about it, I have not. So there; you may admire my restraint. Certainly you will if you ever have the misfortune to _read _it.

May H. came home from the hotel in January to work on her trousseau and Mary is boarding with _me _under the watchful but blessedly nearsighted eye of Mrs. Halloran, and it is almost like old times again, though in a way nothing ever _will _be. May is just as shameless a flirt as ever in her stupid, honest, innocent way and is out "calling" nearly every day with her Lou's cousin Avery Mitchell, or a Sitwell or Mackenzie. She has gained a good twenty pounds since her engagement, and resembles nothing so much as a large, thoroughly rumpled, slightly browning pink rose with a couple of glittering bugs in its heart. Mary is better, too, a _very_ little stouter and redder - - - Mary is a white starflower, and I am a heart-leafed aster, albeit one a little shriveled for lack of light and water.

We worked it all out in the parlor yesterday, on a day of slush and dripping icicles. Kath Darcy is a golden chrysanthemum, Irene - who is coming to visit on six week's leave in March - - is a very frank and matter-of-fact bough of juniper-berries. Aunt Iz is a striped narcissus. Livia is a mayflower. Ilse Burnely is a tufted purple fire-weed.

What else has happened? Exams came out just as well as expected, if not a little better - I missed the star pin by one exam, and not by much. Convinced Uncle Henry to hire Mary on part-time as a copyist; he sputtered and grimaced enough at first, but was glad in the end; she has a good hand and anyway he rather prefers her - - -would be pleased to see her meek and gentle conduct wreak some influence on me, he won't hesitate to say. There were outrages in Russia and mission appeals in Derry Pond church annexes, and Mrs. Rupert H. Norris lecturing on The Essential Ideas of the Theosophist Movement. Mrs. Halloran had two teeth out. Eamon Priest threw a two-hundred-year-old platter at the fireplace because Sarah put the roast in too late. The Priests are all in a roil over it. They are the worst clan for hoarding old dishes that anyone ever saw.

I wrote a _polite _reply to the American admirer, thanking him for his kind words, and then got out "A Country Schoolma'am" from where I had buried it under a stack of mouldy textbooks, and it turns out he was right; it _was_ funny, more funny in the end than sad. I have written two other stories that are not as good, and some of the beginnings of poems - - - always the shapeless, hopeful beginnings. I have talked the ears off Matt and Jem about every kind of literature in existence, and had my ears talked off in my turn.

Father sent me a book of panoramic views of Vancouver and a volume of poems by Miss Preston, and his letters have grown less artificially rushed, though shorter. But I cannot complain of that. It is better than I deserve. A kind of grace in dumb luck or forgiveness. All this winter has been a dim hopeful feeling - - - quiet, perhaps, and _patient_. Perhaps it's the certainty and nearness of an end - - to High School, to my life in Shrews.. _Can _I be growing up a little bit at last? What a strange sensation it gave me to write those words just now. Will I ever get used to being _any _age, I wonder?

But honestly, Posterity. . . you will know better than I do. . . am I _really_ the _only _person in history who didn't love _Quo Vadis_? ?


	84. Feb 24, 1905: Universally Acknowledged

**Friday, February 24, 1905**

It is a truth universally acknowledged. . .that the pace of social activity in Shrewsbury increases exponentially as the weather gets worse.

_Thud. _Well, it is not so easy to write epigramically as it looks. Anyway, my fingers are cold.

It's true nonetheless. There has been such a glut of dances and bonfires and lectures and concerts in the past few weeks that even May is exhausted - I have her here now, lying on a pile of trousseau-stuff on my bed. We were supposed to finish two skirts this afternoon but spoiled enough lines of stitching in the first hour to more than justify giving up entirely. May's heart, I might add, hardly seems in it. You'd think having new clothes would please her, even if she _is _marrying a Mitchell. Well, far be it from _me _to say anything without having my head bitten off and a bolt of chiffon thrown in my direction. What do I know anyway? Meanwhile, the ice-breaker broke down somewhere around midnight on Wednesday and the mail is stuck fast in the Gulf. . .all our petty fears and pleasantries fluttering around in the frigid wind like flocks of crippled sea-birds. That is a satisfying image, but inaccurate. Of course they are all just sitting around in canvas bags in the hold. Meanwhile Halloran scolds and flutters, the Preps overrun everything, and male and female alike flirt with the unquenchable fire of utter boredom. Certainly no one is having _fun _so much as staving off madness with a fly-swatter.

Yet in another way - in a very foolish, unhealthy, _unreasonable _way, it is the jolliest time of the year. I suppose it makes us feel brave and pioneer-ish to wrap up and plough a trail to the nearest church hall - brave and comfortable, for there is always cocoa and a stove around the corner. We are all miserable, but _comfortably _miserable and miserable all at once, as comrades. I can't explain it, really. I never feel so gay in summer as I do singing badly in a crowd on a winter night, face and feet numb, under a sea of indifferent stars. These winter days are the only time I really _like _Shrews., and then I feel as if I am so utterly _of _it that it would be impossible to leave, the way it would be impossible to leave the earth.

That is not accurate, either, but it will have to do.

(May stirs "What are you up there scratching about? Did you finish my basting? You can't be doing _homework _on a _Friday,_ Ev_._" _Can't _I? Oh, my dear May, you haven't the least idea what I _can _do.)

There's a combination concert and pie social tonight in D.P. - dreadful chimera if ever there was one - and May has just informed me that she would "truly, really, sincerely' rather _die _than attend another pie social as long as she lives. Further, she _will _die - of sympathetic indigestion, no doubt - if I so much as _speak _the words "pie social" aloud. But Mary Carswell is frantic to go, even if it means riding eight-odd miles in Ray Sitwell's sleigh at close quarters. She'd sooner blush herself to death than tell the reason, but _I _know; her own dear Ilse Burnely is going to perform a scene from _Trilby_, that scandalous creature, and rain a whole thunderhead of allegedly delightful dialects down on us all, and Mary _must _be there to gush over her clothes and the musical tones of her voice or _the_ _world will end_. I suppose I shall have to tag along, if only to keep Mary from saying anything _too _foolish in front of her darling.

No, I am lying. I am really only curious.

No, that isn't it, either.

I am being enjoined to stop scratching away on whatever-all so that May can fix my hair, at least. She will grumble the whole time about how thick and difficult it is to manage, but she is only jealous. You _are!_ Dear May's hair is just like a handful of grass. I don't know how it doesn't just fall out at a breath of wind, like dandelion fluff.


	85. Feb 25, 1905: A Festive Storm

**Saturday, February 25, 1905**

Well! Well!

May must be kicking herself that she didn't go to the pie-concert-social! You remember I said we all secretly love being snowed in. Well, that particular subconscious desire was more than answered last night - I doubt there were ten people at that party who didn't end up trapped in some put-upon old farmers kitchen till dawn! The first hint of the storm came up during the concert, but no one had heard of any really _bad _weather in store, so we all stayed and milled about eating dreadful big chunks of sugared fruit and paste and congratulating each other on a truly soporific, I mean _chilling_, performance of "Curfew Must Not Ring." Tedium itself! Mary barely managed to speak to Ilse at all; the latter was too busy making love to her Jaunty B, which she does by threatening to beat him over the head with various breakable and durable objects - - Ilse is a _true original_, you see.

Well, the winds began to really howl around ten-thirty and people began to slip away. Half an hour later, the brisk snow turned into a blizzard - the blind-white kind, swirling every way too fast to see as anything but a roiling wall. No doubt next Monday the whole school will be abuzz with who was trapped where and with whom - and poor May will have missed being eyewitness to _any _of it! Mary and I camped out chastely enough in the hall while Ray became the envy of all Sitwells by piling up a sleigh with rustic belles and heading off into the teeth of the storm. We all thought they were done for - but of course we _didn't_ really, or we wouldn't have talked about it so. Anyway, they were the last to get out early enough to _make _it more than half a foot - Mary _had _to offer to clean up, the way she _has _to eat and breathe and make moon-eyes at big blonde girls, and before you knew it the lot of us were stuck fast in that Hall until daybreak and bound to make the best of it.

It was Mary and I, and Dorine Priest, Llewelyen Fletcher, Matt McCreavy, Matt McKay, and Eliza Ferrell from over Hunter River, plus a clamjamfry of church women and poor hapless little Mr. Alf Price, clearly undone by such a surfeit of petticoat, but unable to face the wind nonetheless. Llewellen ran down to Peter Simpson's farm to use the telephone, but it was no use; all the poles had been blown down from here to S'side. And a good thing it was, too, for once it was settled that we had the night to burn, didn't we do a fine job of burning it! It was nearly worth the mail being delayed again - for it _will _be delayed another week, I've no doubt. You'd scream to see how jolly and sly those church matrons got when they had a whole night and a howling wind ahead of them. It was the best time I'd had all winter, honest to James Watt, it was. Aunt Iz and I got up our own concert to pass the time, and we dug into the leftover pie, which was worse than ever and irresistibly delicious. And dear old Miss Melissa Campbell, head of the Baptist Women's Guild made us all coffee in the tin pot - awful stuff _really,_ but hot and heartening with a scoop of sugar in it - and poured Temperance cordials for all and sundry. I'll die and reincarnate a thousand lifetimes before I forget Isabella Brownell Blake, tall as a Lombardy pine, thundering her "Charge of the Light Brigade" in the flagging lamps and wielding a martial pie-fork bloody with Easy Cherry Preserve. Or her true smile at the end of it, the ugliest and truest smile ever seen, breaking her thin face into a galaxy of lines and flashing her big ropy teeth in unashamed delight. Oh, why are we so afraid of being ugly? I won't call it beautiful because it _wasn't_. She has every reason not to smile if it looks like _that._ But _why_? Why on earth should it matter?

Eventually we all fell asleep here and there or sat up whispering. Mary fell asleep in my lap very near dawn and there was no one left to whisper to, and naturally I wished for _you_, Diary, to pour all the quiet and the light into. Now I am back home and I could try to hunt up all the things I thought I would say if you were with me. But perhaps some things aren't words and _can't _be words. Or I am simply too lazy to bother. Or the world is wide and many things are true.

Well, I never said I was a _real _writer, Diary dear.


	86. Feb 27, 1905: Foolish Ilse

**February 26 - no, Monday! Feb. 27 1905**

Rain and sleet today

& yesterday, and ice over the snow after a feeble melt. _All _the trains are still blocked. The sun came up under a canopy of slate and has gone back down again behind the same, barely making a dent in the dark or the cold. You can see for yourself how my fingers are numb. The soggy draggled grass is poking out from the dunes and the yards along Queen St., where here and there a pile of rubbish is jutting coquettishly from the snow-drifts, and all would be perfectly hideous if the sudden freeze hadn't sheathed all the branches in ice. _That _is lovely, and dangerous, and bad for the trees. Could make a facile analogy, but have to make _some _concessions to not being mortified by my awful writing six months hence, so fill in your own pithy wisdom re: chrisms of womanhood, or underclothes, or art. Cross all day; couldn't stand anything. Of course the Shrews. High set are all luminous with gossip after all the snowings-in of Friday. May Hilson's face practically _beams _with it, for all she wasn't there.

Ilse Burnely is really too stupid for this earth. She is at present telling everyone and their cousin how she and her little bruisey-eyed friend spent the night of the storm getting drunk on Shaw whiskey with a couple of "nice" Blair Water boys. In Poor Almira's house, no less. Really, this is a coincidence too precious for art. If _Mark Delange Greaves! ! ! _asked me to accept any such heavy-handed parallelism in _Child of the Sea: A Romance of Bingen_ I should laugh in his sharply delineated face.

Of course it put me in mind of poor Marsh O., for no really good reason and I have been rather foolishly re-reading those old crossed-out and re-copied and torn and blotted pages, or more accurately, skimming them for something to burn. I _did _burn a few things, Diary - I _know_, and I'm sorry, but I can't un-burn them now, and that was my intention. The strange thing about all of it is that they are not even honest - - Marsh was never really so dumb and patient a beast as I have tried to paint him - - nor even simply a pleasant, intelligent young man innocent of scruples - nor even, I think, really interested in me at all, if it comes right down to it. Or is_ that_ a falsehood, too? I shouldn't think about it at all, but I _do. _Ilse's crude, stupid, utterly innocent jabber brought it all jangling back. I seem to have invented a sort of Jaunty Bootblack or dumb bachelor farmer out of a really ordinary and pleasant young man with plans and hopes and conflicts of his own. Did I ever _see _him, in all that time I was swooning around imagining _myself _in love? Did we ever speak to one another?

Sometimes I fear I never _can _not use people - - try as I might, my mind simply converts them all into types and symbols and memories-to-be, and what I call "love" or "hate" is only a literary device. And if I were feeling _grandiose _I would say this is because I belong to the ancient order of Story-Tellers, and if I were unhappy I would say it's because I am inhuman, a piece of smooth stone in the rough shape of a girl, unfit for anything but scorn. But just now I am neither of those things, and I don't believe that either is completely true.

Then again, who knows what Marshall Orde ever thought of _me - - _God forbid _I _ever do! - - or what unrecognizable jumble of traits and life lessons I am to Mary, or Tom - or Cal Perkins, or poor Greg Mackenzie? Who knows what sordid or comfortable myth_ I_ am to anyone?

As for Ilse's story, I don't believe a word of it. If it _were _true, she would know better than to rush around _telling _it. As it is, she is going to ruin her reputation, _and _Miss Starr's in the bargain, and all the Murray glowers on God's earth won't save it. I ought to be grateful she never took much of a liking to _me_. No doubt poor Ilse got a little dizzy from the weather and went to sleep on that filthy couch of the Shaw's and _dreamed _of going on a spree, and the boys were such perfect gentlemen they slept face-down under the kitchen table with their boots firmly buttoned. Not that there isn't whiskey enough in Poor Almira's cupboards; I thought of stealing some myself some days when oblivion looked attractive. Oh! What a stupid, squashed, ugly virtue _prudence _is! Why shouldn't Ilse be free to tell whatever absurd, innocent story she likes? She _isn't _and that's all there is to it - and the awful thing is, there's no way to make her see it. Ilse, Ilse, you're going to fall on your face, poor dear. And there isn't a thing anyone can do to save you. You're going to smash into a million pieces.

Still, I can_not_ believe anything the least bit interesting or scandalous could happen under the chilly crepuscular eye of Ruth Dutton's one true heir and earthly avatar. And if anyone asks me, I shall _say _so. The very idea is ridiculous.

I suppose that's Hazel and Dorine at the door to "study." Had hoped they'd forgotten after all - it's really too late to do anything and no one ever _does _learn much. Poor Hazel is so deadly dull I feel I _ought _to like her out of sympathy with dullness - - but you can imagine for yourself how such best-laid plans go oft awry.


	87. Feb 27, 1905: Foolish Ev

**February 27, 1905**

Of course, I don't really _hate _Emily Starr, either. So I would have said an hour ago. I would have said, I only bristle and go cold when she enters a room. Perhaps I am only sensitive to her because _I _secretly fear that my mouth looks too much like hers in its more intractably Blakeish expressions of disdain. Or some such psychology. Stupid, sophisticated Ev, who will never admit to anything _wholly_, even to her diary. Foolish Ev, who couldn't possibly tell the truth if she tried.

But you see, I _am _human after all, and I _can _hate as well as anyone. Though not, perhaps, with such a calm & pure hatred as Miss Starr, or for so little. I suppose she is a genius of holding grudges like all her clan is supposed to be & none of us can escape our destiny &ct. &ct..

Two hours, maybe. I don't know how long ago. She came to see me to-night, out of jealousy or wounded pride or sheer malice or because I played a prank on her when we were _children _a thousand years ago. Too much to explain for anyone to understand a word & nothing to do but lie down or be up all night. & I have to spend all day at school to-morrow.

I could tear the whole damned world to pieces if I weren't so tired. Or if I thought anyone would notice.

Damn everything.


	88. March 11, 1905: Character Sketch

**Saturday, March 11, 1905**

Starr, Emily Byrd. Starr with two Rs, Byrd with a Y. Cold and white and reptile-eyed and airborne, false friend of charming Highland Scotch grandmothers, and Ilse Burnley, and your Ev. I would have drawn her character long ago if I'd had the heart, and _then_ you would know that I had known all along, but I didn't - from caution or laziness or some wayward sense of justice- - who knows? In any case, I have let it go till now, and now you will be right to cry sour grapes when I put the poor girl honestly to paper.

A small face with a narrow nose and big ears, great discolored eyes too overburdened with eyelid, blackish hair, thin consumptive cheeks disingenuously flushed _in perpetua. _Old-boned _hauteur _and thick flannel petticoats the twin gifts of a passel of maiden and widowed aunties. In school to-day, when Lettie told us about old Fairfax Morrison getting chased off the McAster farm, dear little Em'ly's pinched cat-mouth quavered, like a Temperance babe, and Emily said, "Poor Mr. Morrison." _Not_ poor Meridith McAster, mind. No, you see, Mr. Morrison's is a _romantic _affliction. It takes a delicate spirit like Emily's to distinguish the worthy from the unworthy recipients of her precious sympathies.

Imagine her for a moment - those awful aunts picking at the stray hairs around her forehead, a little wisp of ambition like a kiss-curl. Always a little behind the fashion, a little dream-dazed, a little ridiculous, as _you _might be, my dear Posterity, or I, if we had a little less of sense and more of liberty. She wants more than anything to be the best girl-poet in Shrewsbury – no, nothing so petty; she would take_ all_ of Queen's Country by storm, _you'll see!_ She gapes at the air and sees herself smiling benevolently back from a famous future. Emily, delicate white-gloved soul, who never permits herself to touch the grimy surface of the world.

That is your context. The story itself is – I don't know anymore if it's dull or not. I've written it out so many times it has the slick commercial sheen of a Pear's Soap romance, or of Emily-verse, and is nothing like anything _lived_. But if I had tried to write it out when it _did _happen, it would be nothing but a lot of ugly blots and swear words, and no use to anyone. So you see my dilemma.

You remember I said I would tell you the truth about "A Legend of Abegweit." The truth is, I never wrote a word of it. I found it in one of Poor Almira's old scrapbooks, one fateful summer or another. I suppose I thought I was being defiant in some stupid way - as I couldn't _write _a poem and I couldn't _not _win the contest. Somewhere along the way it began to seem that stealing an old poem was _more _honest than anything else I could have done. Or if not honest, at least kinder - more appropriate. It was an _appropriate _poem; that was the important thing: a poem of the sort I _would _be writing now, if the past two years had gone differently, if I were the sort of girl Father wanted me to be, or Mary Carswell thinks I am: chastely and politely haunted, sing-song, musical without terror. Nothing sticks in the jaw or tastes like blood about it, and its landscape is wistful as I might have been if I'd left the Island at a respectable age and remembered it only in terms of birch and star and beach and the sum of all picnics. Grass dunes unsullied by suicides and smashed crockery and grubby pride, a half-forgotten childhood blurry at the edges. Dream-trees and dream-waters.

Stupid Ev.

So I was a fraud; I don't care. The poem was a fraud. I suppose Emily hunted it down out of wounded vanity, to get back at me for having beaten her at something. I don't know how she found it or where. Anyway, she came to the door, ages ago now, and shoved it at me like a cross at a vampire. She had never forgiven me, you see. She claims it was only for the silly moustache trick, but it can't be. She has always resented me, from the first day we met. I don't know why. I've never known why. Maybe it's just that we're too much alike, or different at the wrong places. Or perhaps cold and vicious and self-satisfied is just the way she _has _to be, by virtue of her lineage, as I seem doomed to the Blake wrath and the Blake bitterness and the awful Blake nose. It's a pitiful thing to be _anyone _inexorably. I could pity her. I could.

One day she lost a contest, and could never forgive me for it. When she saw her opportunity to get back at me, she took it. What could I do? She was right, after all. I never wrote that poem. I tried to take it from her; I felt my face go red; I saw her hard black bruises of eyes fall on me without mercy. All the chill ghosts of my icy-hearted Blake forefathers puckered their dead mouths and sneered their disapproval as I went down before those eyes like a bag of jelly. I won't tell you what went through my mind – only that in the handful of silence as she folded up the poem (_my poor poem_, I thought, and why not; it was as much mine as anyone's these twenty years, yellow and forgotten in Poor Almira's pantry, at least as much mine as the orphan Nancy girl is old Abigail Pickett's), it seemed as though there were some good in what had happened, some good in crying, and in a rush I told her, tried to tell her, about Father in Vancouver and the hideous howling gap between what he wants me to be and what I am, and what else, everything or nothing else; I don't know what I said out loud and what I only remembered. Who knows what awful things I blubbered in my extremity; I've quite put it out of my mind. Or _maybe_ I remember it all, down to the last stutter and snuffle, and it all comes heaving in at me when I try to sleep, but _you'll _never know. Decorum is as good as oblivion, my dear Posterity, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Why did I say anything at all? Down at the base of my brain or down in the knot of my throat or somewhere fluttering in the burning cage of me a little pulse, the magic-lantern flicker of a false future: _Emily's _face softened, her skinny bird arms opening – the cheap cliché in which the two headstrong girls – fast friends – clash in a beautiful blaze and then embrace. I had nothing to trade for my poor poem, not the cheap Parkman set, late of a St. Louis warehouse, nothing but everything I had.

I thought some rather stupid things about it.

I thought maybe now that she knew the worst of me we could see each other at last, and if we could not be friends, at least we might be human to each other. Not spring but the hope of spring, the awful split in the ice like cracking bones, and the living water freed. Isn't that what everyone wants? To be seen and forgiven? Who am I to imagine I know what _anyone _wants, let alone everyone? When I don't know myself?

But we are straying from our sketch.

Emily, whatever her literary and personal failings, makes an admirable set-piece. I felt as though I were watching a scene in a stereoscope: tall freckled Evelyn with bleary eyes, sniffing helplessly like a child with her ugly hands mashed against her ugly face as little Emily stared. Evelyn, the spoiled rich girl, blubbering and whining about some lost trip out West.

Sensitive Emily whose eyes well up with tears at a rainbow in a puddle. Emily the secret smiler and seer of souls.

Emily just stared.

No sense in listing, or even remembering, the unedifying things I did when the door closed. Thank goodness Halloran was out and I was alone; thank goodness Dorine and Hazel never kept their promise to call that evening. What is there to say about Emily Starr in the end? Why should I care about her at all, except that she _is _me? Oh, don't make that face; it's true. It's been true forever. The same bone-headed pride in a vile bone-headed clan, the same vague cheap trade-card ambition, and beneath it the same nameless, pacing fear - I know! No need for a Highland Scotch grandmother to tell _her _fortune. She'll graduate "with honors," no doubt, and spend a few years in some genteel course of study in Toronto or Montreal before marrying some milk-faced brainless boy who will promptly grow a moustache and a belly, and she herself will blow up into a big quivering zeppelin with a trilly voice. In her early forties she'll publish a "slim volume" or two, address Ladies' Clubs by the bucketload on the subject of The Poetry of Climate or the Canadian Spirit in Our Literature, and either smother or neglect her children, like everyone. I shall begin to feel sorry for her in a minute. No, no, I won't!

Of course she is in some trouble now over the night of the snowstorm, but that will pass. Nothing sticks to the Murrays; they're as adept as Blakes at closing ranks. I told Dorine and the others there was no sense at all in trying to make something of it. Then again, my motives can't be wholly pure, can they? No one's can, I think. Or whether they are pure or not doesn't make them good or bad. Miss Janey Milburn has a pure desire to see the whole world made Christian - every island in the South Seas a little Canada - but no one ever thinks to ask her what the heathen think of it, or whether it might not be better for them to be left alone. It's not as if Thursday prayer meetings and the bi-annual threat of hellfire have made us any happier or kinder.

Perhaps Emily's motives are pure and petty. Maybe she really only wanted to bully me into confessing about the moustache. For a long while I was afraid she would show the poem – to Dr. Hardy or Mr. Towers, or Father – but she hasn't; she took the "confession" and nothing more has come of it. Perhaps that was all there ever was between us, that silly trick that anyone might have played on anyone with no ill will. Here I have been trying to write her out as some terribly meaningful shadow-self I have to reconcile myself to, or triumph over, when it is far more likely she is just a rather sour and self-important young girl who felt humiliated once and finally "got her own back." Perhaps everything is really very simple after all.


	89. April 14, 1905: Spring For Now

**Friday, April 14, 1905**

Spring, for now. We had a few days of passable roads and then this storm, which is all the reason I am writing anything tonight. May & I were to go to Hunter River for the concert, but fear the RSPCA would come after us for cruelty to the horses. Forget automobiles! the first man to invent a working _mud-car_ will be a millionaire in half a week. Anyway, our vanity wasn't up to it. I wonder if anyone's was? Poor Miss Edelston is just now trilling Sockery stories to three or four local biddies in the empty community hall, I imagine.

May and her "young man" had a quarrel & for a while thought the marriage was off, but lo, the great event has only been re-scheduled – to next Friday(!) Yes, they've decided to scrap the rest of the engagement and dash into it with their eyes shut & noses plugged, and spoil months of planning in the bargain. Have I told her what I think of this clever solution? Of course I have, and of course it did no good at all. "Anyway, your dress is nearly done, and I have all my things, so what difference does it make?" she said. I _had _an answer, and it was a good answer, but she only cut me off with some insinuation and it turned into a fight. It always _will _with May. It ended badly, with a number of things said that were true and should not have been said. And I went home and tore the sleeves right off the bodice of my Dress of Honor. I would have torn the whole thing to shreds with my teeth if the telephone hadn't gone off. That hateful sound made everything silent, and I stood still waiting to hear the bad news.

In a few moments, Mrs. Halloran came upstairs looking perturbed. "That was May Hilson on the 'phone," she said. "What does she mean about 'sew your dress back together?' "

If she had said it to my face just then, I think I would have frozen her out immediately. But she was far away at the Shrewsbury post office and all I could do was laugh. She had gone to the post office immediately after I left, just to 'phone that I was still her maid of honor.

Who knows what anyone sees in anyone else?

Irene was here nearly two weeks. She arrived & left in rain and in between we had some perfect purply days. But I didn't even mind the rain as much as I pretended. The world is alive again and that is something. Irene is the same as ever, only thinner and more nearsighted, and even more contrary and pragmatic than before – in short, absolutely old-maidish in every particular. It's impossible even to dress her up or do her hair as one might want to at first glance – Mary Carswell's dowdiness is mere circumstance, and can be organdied and silk-rolled away for a night, but Irene's goes down to the bone. She oozes it, like a fluid. I feel plainer next to her, by transference, and stupider by comparison. It's a wonder we can be friends at all. Yet by some absurd mistake of grace we are. When I met her at the Hunter River station, it was just as if we had never parted, and a day after her train left it was as if she was never here. That is the best I can do in any reunion, it seems.

She knows the truth about "A Legend." I told her that, stupidly enough, and most of what _can _be told, simply because we were alone together every night for two weeks. Maybe she isn't one of _us _any longer and so it felt safe – safer than talking to May, or Hazel or Dorine or even Mary, who seems miles away since her little nephew died. She made one of her long-suffering faces and said I ought to know better. Her own secrets are all inside her head, and unless I publish a book of them, invisible. She's begun to think there might be some good in Socialism, and wanted to talk about Universal Salvation as it applies to her rather hapless class of "apprentice wives" out West, and she is very enthusiastic about sanitation and Galtonism in a way that tends to lead to a lopsided conversation. She has come around to my way of thinking about Baudelaire, or what I thought before I stopped reading Baudelaire, and has theories about one or two passages of Whitman that frankly I hope are _not _true.

We read a great many things together and went pedaling around the countryside while it was dry, and took "snaps" on the beach and in the woods with her Kodak Brownie. She wanted to be girlish and jolly and sarcastic and thought I was the best person around to be girlish and jolly with; I craved her common sense and seriousness, and neither of us was really satisfied, though we pretended to be. But that is nothing so terrible; that is happiness, in fact, in its common or garden form.

School is school. 100 in History quiz this week; 98 in French. In English Ilse and the odious E.B.S. snicker and smirk whenever I speak, but I do speak. Boys more distant this year, or I from them. The submissions to the _Quill _are a little better than before. Or else I have grown tolerant in my old age.

I think everything is all right.


	90. April 22, 1905: Devilish Things

**Saturday, April 22, 1905**

Yesterday morning the venerable town of Shrewsbury, P.E.I., along with Derry and Priest Ponds, Blair Water, Hardscrabble, Hunter River, and the black stovepipes of East Shrews., was thrown into the usual uproar over the wedding of Miss May Hilson, 18, to Mr. Lou Mitchell, 21, held in the latest style in the ancestral home of the Hiram Mitchells, in the pouring rain, on the edge of the black Atlantic. Why it should be raining is anyone's guess; we had bright if quiet weather for a week beforehand, and the bride went wheeling with her foolish old friends, Evelyn Blake and Mary Carswell, down to Hardscrabble Valley and up again to the hill of White Cross, which is picturesque except for a surfeit of Irish washerwomen wasting all the golden sunlight on drying their underthings.

I was paired up for the wedding with Geoff North – not Lou's first choice for best man, but the best he could do on short notice – and we had rather a decent time of it. Geoff is a brash, clever, conceited young man of about twenty, who has been to Boston to work but is presently being looked after in his uncle North's loan office, and who has nothing but cheerful contempt for his uncle, the Norths, the Mitchells, Shrewsbury, P.E.I., the Dominion of Canada, and the entire Western Hemisphere. Of course we got along famously. and spent the entire dinner in rapt discussion of the general incompetency of the world. He mashed my hand right between his hands at one point while rhapsodizing over the dreariness of prayer-meetings, and if my poor heart didn't _quite _catch fire at this gesture - well, it was nice just the same, Diary. By wedding's end we had plotted a whole elopement to Italy, complete with _avant-garde_ wedding portrait and scandalous divorce – but nothing was meant to come of it and nothing will, and Geoff is a better flirt than he is a kisser in any case.

May was resplendent and overdressed, and Lou was subdued, stiff-backed, and, I suspect, very drunk. It was really genuinely lovely when they danced together in Lou's father's parlor, with everyone crowded in against the downpour. If I tell you any more about it, you will think me a horrible snob, so I won't. You will just have to take my word for it.

Two days after the wedding - I am writing this in patches, I'm afraid – the bride turned up at the front door of Miss Blake's house, looking fearfully and wonderfully haggard and somehow younger than she has these past ten years - May being one of those girls little girls envy for her womanliness in the early grades, then scorn and pity for the same thing a few years later - and said,

"I'm not going to Ontario with any Mitchell; we're staying here or he can go by himself."

She wouldn't tell me exactly what had happened. She said, "You really are an innocent, Ev," she said. "You know, I think all your flirtatiousness was just innocence after all. Like Ilse. Why didn't you ever hit it off with Ilse, anyway? You two are just as alike as peas. Why do they say peas in a pod? All peas are the same blasted peas. Ugh."

She flopped right on my bed and lay with her hands hanging and blinked at the ceiling. "Well, I got my wedding and now I have to lie in it, that's all. I always thought you knew so much more than me, but you don't, do you? It was all an act. So why did I come here? God knows. Wanted to go cycling. It's late, but who cares? It's warmer out now than it was at my wedding. Isn't that a funny thing? My wedding in the past, like? I didn't see anything strange about a wedding, you know, how we always were going to have weddings. It's just the being-married, that I. _You_ know. Well, we always fought like cats and dogs, I guess. Come on, Ev. Let's go cycling. Let's go wake Mary up; that stupid girl never answers my letters-" for in the meantime Mary had gone back to St. Clair and vanished off the face of the earth.

It was nearly one in the morning, mind. I noted this. "Sure, but you're awake, aren't you? What are you going to do, write a poem? No, you're just going to lie there, thinking lies about me, and wishing _you_ were married so you could do a better job of it."

"I don't wish that," I said - and it was the truth, however it sounded.

"Everyone does," said May. "You can't help it. It's the blight man was born for."

"It's too dark," I said. "We'll end up dead in a ditch."

"You and your ditches. You've got to stop sneering at everything, Ev Blake, or you'll be eighty before you're twenty. Sometimes it's just a beautiful night out, and who cares if you snap your neck."

"How romantic," I said.

But there was no sense wrestling with fate itself - for I did want to go. We nicked a spare wheel from Tom's house - with masculine handlebars and unhygienic saddle, if you haven't been thoroughly shocked yet - and took off down Queen Street at a terrifying clip. The moonscape was eerie and brighter than some days, brighter than the day of May's wedding. We stopped on the hill over Hardscrabble, and wished we'd brought a lunch. "How soon till dawn, do you think?" said May. "Oh, ages," said Ev. And they sat for a while in what would have been silence, if May could ever stop gnawing her fingernails.

Out of the blue she said, "You know I'm going to have a baby." I began to say some glib thing or another, but she cut me off. "August or September; we're not sure exactly. Why don't you come be nursemaid and keep Lou out of the kitchen?"

"I hope you're joking," I said.

"Nah, it'd be funny. Proud Blake working for a Hilson."

"A Mitchell," I corrected.

"Don't remind me. He thinks I've come up in the world, but you should see that brood at family gatherings. All tow-heads, all tipping their heads the same way, and squabble like a flock of chickens. And _peck_. I should have married one of them Orde brothers; at least they don't put on airs of being better than everyone. What would you have done if I'd married an Orde, Ev?" And she grinned like a wicked child, baiting for a scold that was really a sweet. "Never speak to me again?"

"What if we both did?" I said. "We could be sisters then."

She laughed with her shoulders and with no other part of her.

"You're a queer old bird, Ev. I feel like I don't half know you sometimes."

"I could say the same of you, dear," I said.

"You ought to be afraid for me," she said.

"Don't be dramatic," I said."You're hardly an invalid."

"You think it matters? What about Lindy Craig, just up the road? She was no invalid, till she was made one. And _she_ had Dr. Burnley with her. I don't know what they have in Waterloo."

"I'm sure they have doctors in -"

"I'm no kind of ready to be a mother, or, or any of this. _You _know." She shook her pudgy hands in front of her, taking the measure of all of this, all that I knew. "It's a devilish thing, Ev. Away off in Waterloo where I don't know a soul? I thought he'd change his mind about moving out there if he knew, but foolish me thinking Lou would change his mind about anything, when . . ." She sighed. "Well, it's all done. I can't very well stay here by myself, can I? Will you come with me? Only you don't have to answer," she said. "You can think about it. It's something to do, anyway, and you always did want to get off the Island. So at least one of us can get what they want, right?"

I was sorry for her, but I was annoyed, too, at May acting as though I were suddenly already on the shelf, just because _she _is married now. As though I were _jealous _of her and her baby. Though I shouldn't be surprised. May is, in all its facets, good and ill, an Island girl to the core; her highest aspiration has always been to have a good time, to marry tolerably well, to have her children in due course and weave her webs of gossip and goodwill with the rest.

Is that fair? To May, yes. Perhaps not to Island girls as a class.

But I bit my tongue and said she would have Lou and his cousins, and she would always make friends, wherever she went, because no one with any sense could help liking her no matter how badly she went wrong, and that I didn't believe for a minute that she could die of anything. It was partly true - true enough to mean.

It's queer to think about. May - my own careless, skinless May - is going to be a mother, and everything has worked out just as it would have anyway. She and Lou will go away to earn some money, and either settle out in Ontario or come home to run one of the Mitchell properties. May will be a mother without qualification, one of the Mitchell women, fat and pleasant, and capricious and selfish and self-satisfied as ever. I wonder if I will ever be able to ask her if she felt, or what she thought about it. . . if she felt the way about Lou that I have, sometimes, about other people. I suppose if she _did _she woudn't very well want to talk about it with haughty, hypocritical Ev. I can't say I blame her. And then . . . then we will be the same people we ever were, thousands of miles apart. . . and I don't know what will be left between us when we meet again.

Later.

It's been another week since I wrote here last - I keep setting down my pen to answer the doorbell or to let Fantine downstairs and losing two or three days at a go. Hazel and I are already cramming for exams, and I am to write a piece for the commencement - Scoville cornered me today at the S & O and said he'd be pleased if, and I gave in at once, though really I don't know what to write - maybe Father will be in town to see it. I have had a little piece published in the _Woman's Friend,_ that I had almost forgotten about is just a silly composition on the weather I wrote for Miss Alymer long ago, but printed and illustrated it almost looks like something.

Aunt Iz has made a point of saying it's a very nice composition _of its kind. _And dear Mr. Towers, walked _into _the Shoppe when he had no intention of purchasing anything, _solely _to tell me how much time and talent I was wasting. He is well pleased to hear I am going to Vancouver, though all in all he would _rather _I were sweating copy for one of his friends in the United States of Boston. "You might manage to _do something _in the States," he says. "I know you have your heart set on writing literature, and there's no literature in Canada, whatever that old fool Darcy says." I only laughed and said that I would be all right, and it would do me good to see the rest of the country before I ran off to another one.

May has left for Ontario with her Mitchell, without me. Even if I had wanted to go, the Blakes would never have stood for it. Anyway I am going to Vancouver with Father as soon as school is out. The tickets arrived in a large brown envelope this afternoon, along with a postcard full of general good wishes and advice, but no mention of when he was coming to Shrews.. I suppose he wants it to be a surprise, but it will interfere with exams if he turns up too early; I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, but I would _like _to earn the star pin again. I would like to be able to meet him at the station wearing it, and not say anything about it until he noticed – or, what is more likely, until Tom or Aunt Iz pointed it out. I think I have a good chance, especially if I don't wear out Kath's patience in a the next day or so.

Mrs. Bell at the post office said she felt sorry for "that nice Mitchell boy." Why? Oh, never mind why! "You're lucky you don't know anything about it," she clucked. I could have disabused her, but I didn't. I only called her "dear" and froze her out, and now she will tell all her biddy friends that "Kenneth Blake's girl" is loyal to a fault, and proud as the peacock's queen, and a regular flirt to boot, or so she's heard, until it comes back to Uncle Henry or Mrs. Halloran and I am pestered about it. For a little while, at least.

Today the wind is high and cool and the harbor is a terrible deep and sparkling blue, and the trees and grass are bright and slow, as in a dream. I have had the saddest dreams lately, and the funny thing is, I can't tell _why _they are sad. I'm riding or wheeling or walking down a hillside on some windy day like this, and the paint on all the buildings is obviously peeling in the heavy light, and someone asks me a question – someone I know, but changed, or someone I don't know at all, and everything shifts, somehow; everything shimmers.

Today even the ugliest things are beautiful and sad. The tramps in the station grass and the post office wall with its scabby, faded soap ads, the livery stable and lurching vacant houses, the long grass whispering through the rust and scrap – all of them want to lay some claim on me. Hazel's little sister died of the whooping-cough yesterday, and Mrs. Halloran is going to watch me make a pie for the funeral. One of Mrs. Adamson's boarders took poison on Monday and Dr. Burnley stayed up with him all night until he woke, and when he did, he threw the decanter at the doctor and cursed him for meddling. Mistresses Dutton and Halloran are walking together on Queen Street this minute, and each wrinkling her nose at the distance. . . and now here comes the object of their disapproval – a flock of little girls in knee skirts and plaits, shrieking and stumbling over each other as they stampede down the hill.

In broad outlines I am happy – happy for May, and for myself, with my silly little publication – and happy to be heading into exams with a clear head, and happier than anything to be going West with Father. And today the air is cloudy with lilacs, and the sea is singing its old dumb senseless song. There's a sea in Vancouver I've never seen – and I think it is a devilish thing, Diary, to have to love a place that has no home for me in it, and to hate a place that _is _my home for all that.


	91. July 5, 1905: True Story

**Wednesday, July 5, 1905**

I'd begun to think I had outgrown having a diary. I didn't note it when exams began or school ended, or even that Mary has been followed around by an earnest little churchman for the past month. I have had a star pin and two "publications" of decidedly undistinguished character - the first paid in four copies of itself, and the second not at all - without even the effort of pretending to be indifferent to them. Father is late arriving and Uncle Henry is being childish about it. He never had the imagination or character Father had and so has to pretend to be better than him in every other way. Aunt Iz is just as bad, without even the excuse of childhood envy.

I don't like Mary's suitor exactly - he seems wrapped in a permanent gauze of stupidity and ignorance that no course of study can penetrate, and his sermons are an embarrassment to all mankind - but in a way I like him for _her_. At least, he's kind and not bad-looking, and he glows like a coal when he holds her hand. But every time I have to sit in a room with him, he bores me to the brink of death. I'm sure I'm being unfair in some way, but I don't know

Kath Darcy and I came out at the top of the class, along with Will Morris and the J.B., who gave a speech - I can't tell now if it was good or awful. I thought it terribly fatuous at the time but the more I tried to explain what was wrong with it, the more I liked it. That is the J. B.'s gift in a nutshell. E.B.S., as president of the class, had the dubious honor of delivering the "class prophecy." I am glad it wasn't me. I would have told everyone exactly what I thought of their future, out of sheer exhaustion. Emily, tender soul that she is, she elected for bland flattery rather than insult disguised as flattery, with some rather stale jokes mixed in.

In the post office yesterday I saw Marshall Orde, with one of the girls from Cavendish - Nana or Hettie or Hepzibah; I've forgotten. I haven't really forgotten. One of those big bare-armed girls so fleshy and spreading she seems always in danger of coming apart entirely, like a cloud. Of course they _all _have names, and precocious freckled little brothers and saintly parents with grey planks for faces; of course we can presume she loved him honestly enough. He was his old immovable self, warm & friendly – without even the courtesy of sadness in face or voice. They are going to be married next month. "So you know," he said. And he heard I'd won quite an important prize, and was it true I was going out West? His face was all candor, so open it was invisible. I was wearing my star pin, and he noticed, and explained its significance to Natty or Nanette, and guessed I would be heading to college or teaching school, if not writing a book or two. "Smartest girl on the Island," he said. They smiled over that, he and his cloud girl, like a private joke, and she opened her sleepy eyes wide at me and put her head against his arm.

Of course it didn't matter - time, or bitterness, or any of the things that _ought _to - of course the old feeling came over me - what a phrase! It came over me like a fog or a tide, and I was afraid that I would never cease from drowning. I behaved – oh, very well! I was clever and sensible enough to make my bitter old ancestors proud. I took his girl's fat fingers in my hand and congratulated them both. Mary is my witness. Marsh will say the same, if he remembers at all. We Blakes are nothing if not impeccable liars.

Of course, of course.

I nearly didn't write that down at all – that M. was engaged. A part of me wanted to simply let it go unsaid – to go off West pretending there was still in that sorry affair a _might have been. _To let Marshall Orde be a fetish I hang by my heart for the rest of my life on earth, if necessary. There was a story I wanted to spin about impossible love and the barriers of class and a lot of other nonsense out of Ann Radcliffe books- but it was not the true story, and I knew it. In the morning everything was clear and quiet, and I knew I would have to write the truth if I wrote anything. The real story is that Marsh Orde will marry a Cavendish girl next month, according to the laws of nature. There will be plum cake and a dull prayer or two and his friends will make sly jokes and whirl her around to fiddle music, and then the two of them will settle out somewhere and feed chickens. Meanwhile, Evelyn Blake will go to Vancouver and Mrs. Halloran will continue to receive and be thrown into confusion by rejection notices for months to come.

That isn't a tragedy, no matter how much I want to make it one. That isn't anything but life in its common or garden form.

I had a bad night of it. I won't dwell on details.

What good is it saying anything? It is what ought to have happened. It would be stupid and _mean _to pretend I had a claim on him. May they be happy, then, and have scads of fat tow-headed children with big hands. May everything be as it ought.


	92. July 12, 1905: The Ships at Sea

**Wednesday, July 12, 1905**_  
_

_The rain is raining all around _

_It falls on field and tree_

_It falls on our umbrellas here_

_And on the ships at sea._

I remember Miss Luella Shaw, my first-ever schoolteacher, making the first form learn that little poem by heart, lo these many years ago. The very next day it rained—a grey Sunday with the red leaves half gone—and I could _see _the ships at sea, out there beyond the horizon, with our rain falling on them. I remember myself thinking the words, "From that day on I wanted to be a poet."

The words weren't true _exactly_ but I felt sure I was going to write them sooner or later just the same. And you can see now that I have.

Then Miss Luella Shaw married a millionaire—or so the story went; probably he was only an American, but to us, all Americans were millionaires, leastways all the big red-faced ones—and boarded a train for the mythic land of California. She read us a poem about the West before she left, but I didn't love it as well as the rain poem.

That was the first poem I loved, though I had read other better poems before then without noticing. It was the first one I could _see._ I thought of it today as the rain fell on my lovely new grey umbrella and my neat grey suit. It fell all day as Aunt Iz and I rode the train in to Charlottetown, and it fell on the ferry and the waters it cut through, on the ships seen and unseen, on the chattering Americans in their furs and the fishermen slick and clamorous as seals.


End file.
